May I again put to the Acting Prime Minister the question which I put to him yesterday on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition.

I wish to express my regret for not having been able to reply to the question yesterday. The hon. Leader of the Opposition gave me notice of it on Monday night, but I could not be here yesterday in order to reply to it. Perhaps it is as well that I should repeat the question now. The first question put to me was whether I, in view of the necessary arrangements members have to make, would indicate on what date the end of the Session could be expected. I wish to say that I can only express my personal opinion. In view of the fact that the Government is prepared to let several Bills which are still on the Order Paper stand over and not to proceed with them, I am of opinion that it would be possible to conclude the Session on 9th June. That of course depends also on the actions and interests of hon. members themselves. He further asked me what work we still have to deal with. It will be good if hon. members would look at today’s Order Paper. I will give an indication of what Bills and orders on the Order Paper we still intend finishing before the end of the Session. Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 must be concluded, and in connection with No. 5 the usual Appropriation Bill will of course follow. Then there is No. 6. As regards the Silicosis Bill I have already stated that we will not place that on the Statute Book this year. It will per haps be necessary for the Minister of Mines to make a statement in connection with that, which may perhaps lead to a certain amount of discussion; but we will not go as far as to have the second reading. We are proceeding with Number 8. With numbers 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 we will not proceed; nor with number 16. Then there is the usual Finance Bill, the so-called Omnibus Bill which is passed every year, and also a small amendment Bill in connection with the Native Urban Areas Act. We could not submit that earlier because the Consolidation Bill had not yet been approved of by both Houses. We could not incorporate the amendment in the Consolidating Bill. But there is an urgent amendment which must be made on a temporary basis. It probably will not take much time. Possibly we will submit Bills amending the Wine and Spirits Control Act and to provide for the taking over of the officials or the Dairy Board by the Department of Social Welfare in connection with the milk and butter scheme. Those two Bills, although they are desirable, are not essential and will only be proceeded with if there is evidence that the House is unanimous. I have already said that there will be a Bill in connection with the control over wine and spirits. The other is in regard to the taking over of the officials of the Dairy Board by the Department of Social Welfare in connection with the execution of the milk and butter scheme. Then there is number 29, the private Bill in connection with the incorporation of the Law Society of Natal. I have been given the assurance that all parties in the House are agreed that the further stages thereof shall be taken and that it will not take more than a few minutes. If that is so, I am prepared to allow time for it, but only on that condition. Then there are certain reports of the Select Committees which must be dealt with. There is the report of the Pensions Committee, and the Bill arising from it, which is on the Order Paper for tomorrow. That is the most important. Then there is the report of the Select Committee on Crown Lands, number 17 on today’s paper, which is usually dealt with. Then we have the report of the Select Committee on Public Accounts in connection with the war accounts. I do not know whether this report will be printed in time for it to be discussed. Then we have the first report of the Select Committee on Native Affairs (No. 19). As far as I know it is not necessary to discuss the third report. Then there will possibly be submitted the report of the Select Committee on Bretton Woods. But that has not been submitted yet. Then there is still Notice of Motion No. 1 on page 832 of the Order Paper, and I think also the usual suggestions in connection with trade agreements which we usually get towards the end of the Session. The main activities still remaining are items 1 to 5 on the Order Paper of today and the Pensions Report. I do not think there is anything further which will occupy much time.

What about Dongola?

No report has yet been submitted. It seems as if the Select Committee is still busily engaged on the Bill.

Are you continuing with the Bill?

Unless we have the report we cannot continue with it.

But if you do receive the report?

It has not yet been submitted and it seems as if it will still last some time.

I move—

In asking the House to assent to this Bill, the Government is giving expression to its conviction that the housing problem in South Africa constitutes a national emergency, and that it is prepared to accept full responsibility for attempting to solve it. This is the second time, within the space of twelve months, that I have had to come to Parliament to ask for an amendment of the law relating to housing. Hon. members will, I have no doubt, realise that only the most compelling of reasons would have induced the Government, after barely a year’s experience with its national housing policy, to depart from the principles already laid down, and to embark upon a far-reaching plan of national control of house-building in the widest sense, with the State taking over the direct responsibility for the erection of houses. By the force of circumstances the Government has been driven to concede the existence of such compelling reasons, and to change its course. The nature of those circumstances I shall deal with briefly. The deductions to be drawn from them may form the subject of controversy. But, as to their existence, there can be no dispute. During the 1944 Session of Parliament the Housing Amendment Act was passed, providing for the substitution of the existing Central Housing Board by a National Housing and Planning Commission, a body more representative and enjoying wider powers than its predecessor. Although the commission was given the statutory power to construct houses in terms of the Housing Act, the main responsibility for the actual building of houses was, by Parliament, left with local authorities, while the commission was entrusted with the task of stimulating building, providing the necessary finance, and generally taking such steps as were necessary to plan a progressive programme of housing to meet the needs of the people. From the outset it was realised that such planning should be divided into two categories, namely, a long-range programme embracing the next five to ten years; and an immediate programme of building, subject to the availability of building materials, to meet the urgent and pressing needs of the moment. Shortly after the National Housing and Planning Commission began to function, various negotiations with national bodies, representing local authorities, took place for the purpose of discussing and removing difficulties in the way of an immediate housing drive. As a consequence agreement was reached on the question of the respective losses to be borne on sub-economic housing schemes by the Government and local authorities—a matter which at that stage was stated to be the most serious obstacle. With the financial hurdle out of the way, the highest hopes were held by my technical advisers in regard to a concerted effort by local authorities throughout the country. Certainly at that stage no warning was given to me about difficulties in carrying out the immediate programme, other than those resulting from the limitation of building materials. In June, 1944, local authorities were asked to furnish the commission with their housing programmes for the year ending June, 1945, and were eventually allocated schemes including approximately 12,500 houses (to the limit of available materials), which they undertook to commence within this period. Subsequently these local authorities were asked whether they could carry out their undertakings and, with negligible exceptions, confirmed that the programme would be completed. That was the position as put to me in November, 1944. And, in those circumstances, I am convinced that hon. members will agree that the Government was justified in believing that it could face the New Year with a measure of equanimity, in so far as its immediate housing programme was concerned. The national housing programme involved the building of 12,000 houses by June, 1945. The construction of national houses, however, is not the only means of meeting the housing shortage, and in addition provision at that time had been made by the Building Controller for the issue of some 600 permits per month for private building. Every house completed, whether it be a national house or whether it is built by private enterprise, helps to diminish the housing shortage. And it was with this knowledge that the then Director of Housing, Dr. Hamlin, in no spirit of undue optimism announced in November, 1944, at Bloemfontein, that some 26,000 houses would be completed during the Parliamentary year. It has, I regret to say, become increasingly clear that for various reasons this will not be the case; in other words, that the programme in so far as national houses are, concerned will not nearly be completed. I am not in a position today to give accurate* figures, but, if 4,000 of the 12,000 national houses anticipated are available for occupation, we shall be fortunate. After full enquiry the newly appointed Director of Housing, Major Collings—who has had wide experience in the erection of Defence buildings during a period of emergency—gives the following grounds for this failure:

1. (a) Difficulty in acquiring land;
2. (b) Difficulty in securing labour;
3. (c) Difficulty in securing suitable tenders;
4. (d) Time taken by applications passing to various authorities; and
5. (e) Apathy.

I think this is a just and reasonable estimate of the sum total of causes which have hindered the construction of national houses. I shall certainly not attempt to take the matter further today, as no possible service could be rendered by doing so. That some local authorities have had their difficulties has always been admitted, just as it is common knowledge that some have, through apathy or other causes, allowed apparent difficulties to assume too formidable a complexion. What is important, and what over-rides all other considerations, is that we are now faced with a national emergency and that, to overcome that emergency, special measures are necessary. This Bill, which I now ask the House to grant a second reading, contains such special measures, measures which, in the opinion of the Government, are essential to enable it to cope with the temporary situation which has arisen. In effect, I am asking Parliament to give me a blank cheque during a limited period. That cheque will ultimately have to be met—and Parliament will be the final judge whether it should be honoured or not. Before coming to deal with the actual provisions of the Bill, I should like briefly to indicate to hon. members the lines along which I am now attempting to approach the problem. I think it has become abundantly clear that the present system of relying mainly on the initiative of local authorities for the construction of houses, coupled with the existing unsatisfactory methods of training skilled building craftsmen, will not only fail to meet the housing shortage, but will also have disastrous results for’ the country as a whole. This being so, the Government has decided that it should itself embark on a policy of constructing national houses where responsible local and other authorities, either through apathy or owing to circumstances beyond their control, have not provided or are unlikely to provide for the needs of the people. To give effect to this policy, it will be necessary to utilise to the full both the powers already given to the commission by existing legislation, and to provide additional powers not contained in existing legislation. The National Housing and Planning Commission already has the right to erect dwellings, to purchase building materials for housing schemes, and to undertake research. It does not as yet possess powers of expropriation—powers which, in terms of Section 2 of the Bill, will be made available to it. When the ’ provisions of the Bill become operative, the commission will be authorised to act for the Government; to commence building operations without delay wherever necessary; to acquire in bulk the building materials necessary for national housing; and to undertake experimental building, possibly by utilising trainees, for the purpose of testing the most suitable houses for the country’s needs. There are four essential factors in the building of houses, namely, land, materials, labour, and construction costs. Land: With the best will in the world, no one can build a single house without land on which to place the structure—unless of course, one resigns oneself to the stimulating, though unprofitable pastime, of building castles in the air. Land necessary for housing will naturally have to be acquired by purchase, wherever possible. But expropriation is inevitable. Expropriation for housing purposes can at present be achieved under Section 11 of the Housing Act. But there are innumerable delays and frustrations, and the whole process is ringed round with conditions and restrictions which tend to make the process a slow and lingering one. In terms of Section 2 (1), (b) of the Bill, regulations may be made by the Governor-General regarding the expropriation, with the written consent of the Minister, of land for the construction of dwellings. It is contemplated that these regulations will provide for a much quicker process of expropriation by the commission, or by local authorities. I would emphasise that in taking these powers the Government is seeking to give them not only to the commission but also where necessary to local authorities; the commission will always be willing and ready to exercise such powers itself on behalf of local authorities. What I here have in view is the type of procedure adopted by the Defence Department—when Defence buildings were urgently necessary— of requisitioning land on, say, 30 days’ notice, without the need for following the lengthy procedure necessary under normal expropriation proceedings. In future, the commission or local authorities will be able to take possession and start building at once; they can talk about compensation later. It should be emphasised, of course, that all expropriation is subject to Ministerial consent, whether it is carried out by the commission of local authorities or by a provincial housing board established under Clause 4. In dealing with land one must inevitably deal with the question of the cost of the land. The object the Government has in view in this Bill is the provision of houses which can be leased or sold at reasonable prices. If the price of the land is exorbitantly high, this object will be defeated. The Bill accordingly, in terms of the provisions of Section 3 prescribes certain limitations upon the amount which may be paid by way of compensation for land expropriated. Briefly the provisions contained in Section 3 provides as follows, that the owner of land may be compensated by being given an amount equal to the latest municipal valuation plus 30 per cent., or the price paid by the owner plus 6 per cent. on the said amount for the period as from the date of acquisition to the date of expropriation. There are these alternatives, and it is incumbent upon the official who makes the award to grant the lesser of these two alternatives. Section 3 also takes into account the position of improvements made upon the land expropriated, and the appropriate provisions are contained in the section to meet such a case. Section 3 (3) provides for the case where there has been a speculative dealing and where the land has been purchased at more than the normal price for speculative purposes. In terms of that section—

And in that case compensation will be based upon the purchase price paid by the last owner, plus 6 per cent., another means of computing compensation still coming into operation. I go on next to deal with materials. Materials for national and private housing are being reserved by the Building Controller. The Deputy Building Controller is a member of the National and Planning Commission, and is in close touch both with the Director of Housing and the Chairman of the Commission. It is my intention to appoint a Housing Executive Board on which the Deputy Building Controller will be represented. In dealing with housing a number of departments may be affected from time to time. There is the Building Control Department, the Department of Public Works, Commerce and Industries, and the Labour Department, and in order to ensure the fullest co-operation in carrying out the Government’s housing plans it has been thougt advisable to have such a board on which the heads of the departments may sit. For assistance must and will be given to make building materials available both for national housing and for construction by private enterprise of houses necessary to meet immediate needs. But once again the cost feature enters into the picture and in that regard I refer hon. members to Section 2 (1) (t) which deals with the control of materials used in the construction of buildings and the control of the prices of such materials. These powers will be exercised. It is the Government’s intention to use these powers, but no separate section will be set up in the division of housing, but we will naturally use the existing machinery for fixing prices, namely the machinery already in existence in the office of the Price Controller. We shall probably have to import materials in bulk although every effort will be made to stimulate local production. In suitable cases I contemplate allowing contractors to import stocks which they can hold on behalf of the commission.

And what will you pay the contractors?

I will come to that in a moment. The next matter is labour. In dealing with the question of labour I have always tried to draw a distinction between our immediate and our long-range building programme. If we are to carry out an adequate building programme over the next five or ten years, it is clear that we shall have to increase very materially our building labour force. It has been suggested that there is not sufficient labour to carry out even the immediate programme. Whether that is correct or not it is certain that the best use is not being made of the available material. It is for this reason that provision is made in Section 2 (1) (s) (vii) of the Bill—

It is the intention to concentrate all available building artisans on essential housing construction. But we cannot live only in the present. We must look to the years ahead, to the housing needs which face us in the post-war era and we must plan accordingly. If we take the long view, then it must be obvious that the present serious shortage of skilled building artisans cannot be overcome without adopting extraordinary methods. If satisfactory progress is to be made with the national housing schemes, large numbers of additional operatives will be required to be placed on skilled building work with the least possible delay. Unlike other skilled trades, such as engineering, furniture making and printing, in which are employed large numbers of operatives, in addition to the journeymen, apprentices and labourers, in the building trades no operatives are employed. The position has, in addition, been made worse by the failure of the employers in the building industry to engage a reasonable number of apprentices. This will be apparent when it is stated that there are only 2,209 apprentices to 19,554 journeymen; a ratio of one apprentice to 8.8 journeymen, whereas in the engineering industry the ratio is one apprentice to 2.3 journeymen. As labour costs in the erection of houses constitute approximately 40 per cent. of the total cost, it will not suffice to deal merely with this aspect of the problem, particularly as the ratio of skilled to unskilled labour costs is, say, 65 to 35. Before they can be expected to co-operate in any scheme which, on the face of it, can be regarded as flooding the labour market, members of building trade unions will naturally expect the following: Effective safeguards against their being displaced from employment by newcomers, and against exploitation of any scheme by private persons for gain; guaranteed employment at agreement wages over a period of years; the engagement of adequate numbers of apprentrices; assurances that the Government will take the necessary steps to ensure that advantages, secured in consequence of the scheme decided upon, will not be dissipated by failure to deal effectively with prices of materials and inflated profits on sales of land for building sites; and excess profits to contractors. I have already referred to those provisions of the Bill which deal specifically with profits on the sale of land, and which enable the Governor-General to promulgate regulations in respect of the prices and control of building materials. Having regard to what is stated above—in other words, to the justice of giving building artisans a quid pro quo—provision has also been made, in 2 (1) (r) of the Bill, for the limitation of contractors’ profits—

The hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) will see that this provision deals with the point raised by way of interjection earlier, but this is not a form of cost plus system. Here the cost is to be calculated in advance, or a method or calculating it must be prescribed in advance, and when that has been done 6 per cent. may be added to such cost.

Is it possible to make such a calculation?

The Director of Housing for example has under consideration the question of erecting a number of test cottages, 10 or 20, costing them down to the last screw and then fixing the price and allowing the contractors that price plus 6 per cent.

How long will the test take?

The Director has interested himself in the so-called “rumble” house and contrary to prior reports given to me he is very interested in it. It will be speeded up.

We will not wait as long then äs for your 50,000 houses?

One hopes to improve as one goes along. And, as a result of negotiations which have taken place between the Secretary for Labour and the Building Trade Unions, I am confident that the Government will now have the full support and co-operation of the members of these Unions. I am deeply indebted to these unions for their ready and willing support; and I am equally indebted to the representatives of the Master Builders, who have indicated in clear, and unambiguous terms that they will co-operate with the Government to the fullest extent in its determined effort to come to grips with the housing emergency. In terms of paragraph 2 of the Bill, the Governor-General is empowered to make regulations providing for the registration of competent building artisans, and giving guarantees of stable employment for a fixed period; for the fixing of wages in specific areas, with due regard to Industrial Council agreements or other wage awards; for the diversion of building labour to national housing schemes; for making unlawful the employment of labour at wages higher than agreement wages; for the introduction of measures of intensive training, so as to render available additional labour, and to protect such labour; for compelling employers to employ such additional apprentices as may be necessary to ensure that adequate building craftsmen are available, and for the regulation of the employment in different areas of artisans, learners or apprentices of different races. While the proposals, which I have outlined, are designed to meet the abnormal conditions obtaining at present, they will, I earnestly hope, in many ways pave the way for comprehensive long-range planning, as well as assist in solving the problem of the employment. The following training schemes are visualised in the immediate future: The Cott system of intensive training which has proved successful, not only in the Union, but elsewhere among the Allied Nations for the training of engineering operatives for skilled work, should be used to train some 5,000 demobilised volunteers as bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, electrical wiremen and plumbers over a period of 16 weeks. These trainees should remain on Defence pay-roll or receive payment on the Cott basis while being instructed. Upon satisfactorily completing the course, these trainees should be placed in the building industry, preferably on Government, provincial, National Housing and Planning Commision, or municipal works. It should be emphasised that the closed-shop provisions of any Industrial Council agreement must not be allowed to prevent the employment of any such trainees. In areas where housing facilities for non-Europeans are being provided, building work intended for use only by non-Europeans should be exempted from Industrial Council agreements, or other wage instruments. Provision will have to be made for such buildings to be erected mainly by non-European dilutees, working in the ratio, say, of four dilutees to one registered artisan. These dilutees—I contemplate non-European ex-volunteers—should be afforded intensive training for a period of approximately 10 weeks, before proceeding to specific employment; during this period I anticipate that they will either be retained on the army pay-roll, or otherwise be assisted by the Directorate of Demobilisation. I am informed by my technical advisers that an appropriate wage for the dilutees, after satisfactory completion of their training course, would be 1s. 6d. per hour for the first six months’ experience, thereafter rising by 3d. per hour to 3s. per hour. I have now dealt with the main reasons for Sections 3 and 4. Before touching on some of the remaining clauses I should explain why the Bill was so drafted as to enable regulations to be promulgated in terms of Section 2. It was originally the intention of the Government to place before the House a Bill in which all the powers sought would be set out in terms of the Bill itself. A Bill along these lines was drafted, but a practical and mechanical defect intervened and the law advisers said that if we do that another month would elapse and it will be impossible to introduce this legislation during this Session. For these reasons it is that I now come to Parliament to ask for these extraordinary powers, for what virtually is a blank cheque. I appreciate that Parliament does not lightly grant powers such as this. It is not the normal procedure to allow Ministers such powers except in exceptional circumstances. We have had an example of it during the last five and a half years, namely the War Measures Act, in terms of which emergency regulations could be promulgated. That Act was justified by the fact that the country was at war. I would earnestly ask hon. members to deal with this Bill on the basis of this being another national emergency, and ask the House to allow me to have these powers. Let me deal briefly with some of the remaining sections. Section 4 deals with the Government’s decision to allow Natal to establish a Provincial Housing Board. That will be an interesting experiment. The Administrator of Natal had full discussions with the Government and placed before the Government his proposals for housing in Natal. The Bill provides that the commission will have parallel powers in Natal, but in terms of the agreement with the Administrator the commission will not exercise any of its powers until such time that the Government is satisfied that housing is not dealt with adequately.

What reason is there for the differentiation between Natal and the other provinces?

The other provinces could have done the same if they wished to. I emphasise that as far as the expropriation of land is concerned in Natal, as elsewhere, there can be no expropriation without the consent of the Minister. Section 6 provides for the appointment of an additional member of the commission. I intend to appoint a woman, following on representations by the National Council of Women. Section 7 will enable me to appoint to the National Advisory Council on Housing a representative of utility companies, if the latter cannot agree upon a nominee. In terms of the present Act the utility companies have to nominate a representative. We have found that they cannot reach agreement, and provision is now made for the Minister to do so if they cannot agree. I have now attempted to deal with the reasons which have compelled the Government to ask Parliament for these special powers in regard to housing. In conclusion I wish to say this. The Government is no longer concerned with the erection of national houses only. It is concerned with the erection of houses of all types throughout the country and I am now looked upon as the Minister of Housing. We are faced with a shortage and difficulties which emerged from wartime conditions, shortage of materials, dislocation of movement of the population, and shortly we will be faced with the return of our men from the forces. In those circumstances it seems to me that the time has come when the Government must take a much wider perspective in relation to housing than previously. For this reason. I propose to appoint regional committees dealing with houses at Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria with a chairman, or a Local Regional Commissioner for Housing, who will be responsible for advising the Government on the housing position in all its aspects within the area of its jurisdiction. Regard will have to be had to the necessity to which I referred earlier for the closest co-operation between the Director of Building, the Housing Division, the Housing Commission and the Building Controller. That close contact already exists but there is no machinery at present for dealing with a number of matters which have not been dealt with in the past, and it is proposed now, in conjunction with the Building Controller to make such machinery available. In the new approach to housing I am most anxious to carry the local authorities with me. If they have difficulties I will try, through the powers given to me in this Bill to assist them. It is only when the local authorities cannot or will not carry out their housing obligations that the Government will intervene. In reviewing the position as a whole I am convinced that at rockbottom it is the multiplicity of authorities and the absence of one céntral authority which has in the past stood in the way of building development. That authority is now being given to the National Housing and Planning Commission which is being empowered to operate and to secure pieces of land, the labour and the material for building houses, peremptorily brushing aside all administrative red-tape and all obstructions from pressure groups. This Bill, Mr. Speaker, aims, in effect, at applying to the housing problem of South Africa the shock tactics that were used to equip South Africa for war in September, 1939. The parallel is a very close one. This Bill embodies an out-and-out attempt to destroy the enemies of slumdom, overcrowding and social degeneration that are bound up with the housing shortage. And it is a fight in which the honour of the country, and the legitimate claims of our serving men, are directly involved. I now look, Sir, to Parliament to give me and the Housing Commission the powers we need. I realise that these powers are drastic and exceptional. I ask them only, however, for a limited period, namely, for the three years provided in the Bill. And, Sir, if the House is prepared to entrust to me the blank cheque which I now, in these special circumstances, seek, I am prepared to give the undertaking that such powers will be exercised promptly, vigorously, and with only one interest in view, namely, the building of the missing homes that war exigencies have inevitably delayed.

On the same day it was said in the House that we should try to finish the work next week the Minister appears before us with a measure which in itself is so important and I may say so far-reaching that it would have taken days in the normal course of events to sift the matter, because here we are practically dealing with the introduction of a constitutional change in the whole Parliamentary system. Now the Minister comes at this stage and has many excuses. The Minister says he did not have time enough. Four years ago the Minister stated that he would build 10,000 houses, the following year it rose to 20,000 and the year after to 30,000, while the people who had knowledge of the matter knew that at that stage there was not enough material for even 5,000 houses. All these years the Minister had time to draw up a Bill to obtain power from Parliament to enable the Government to build the necessary houses. Not a single step was taken except that in the last month, after having delayed three years, the Minister, as he told us this morning, tried to draft a Bill. What really happened, I think, was that the Minister found that there was no time to draw up a Bill in such a way that Parliament could really grant these powers. We are aware of it that it is necessary to have powers to remove certain difficulties. Who is more conscious of it than we on this side of the House that the divided control amongst the various authorities about which the Minister spoke a moment ago makes it impossible to go ahead and to speed up the building of houses within a period which will not drag on for ever, perhaps for years. We know the powers are necessary and we are not against these powers being granted. I just wish to point out that as far as Public Health is concerned the Minister was willing to make divided control worse than it ever was before. But now he comes to the House and says that he cannot have divided control and has to have special powers to get past that. He wishes to eliminate divided control. The Minister could have drafted the Bill and laid it before this House which would have given him powers from the Parliament of the country, but because he himself does not know what he wants and because his officials do not know what they want, he comes before this House with a Bill to give him powers which he himself today does not know how to exercise. Even today he does not know what he is really asking for. As a result he cannot introduce a Bill which will grant him those powers. I am convinced of it, unfortunately convinced, that with the red tape which the Minister will create through this Bill and through his own regulations and proclamations he will tie himself up completely. That is unfortunately my conviction. We protest against this sort of legislation. We know that the Minister was impotent in the past, but we also know that a crisis exists and that these powers must be obtained in one way or another. We are not going to tell the Minister that we agree to his doing this sort of thing. All we can say is that we know that a crisis exists and that the best must be done that can be done.’ but we cannot see that that will happen through the actions of the Minister in this manner. Further than that we do not go. I am convinced thereof that not only for housing but for social welfare and creating employment for the whole population special measures will be required, but if you want to do that you must come to Parliament and receive those powers by legislation which gives the Government of the day the power to do those things. That the Minister could not do. He could not come here and by means of the Bill tell the country what he is really going to do and what restrictions he was going to place on the population of the country. He comes here with a practically planless Bill, with vague indications of what he will ask for, but the country, the local authorities and the private owners do not in the least know what awaits them. They must wait until the Government Gazette appears and I can already see that every week, after the Minister has got a bit involved in red tape, three or four proclamations will appear, the one repealing or amending the other, because there will be no Parliament to assist the Minister to do the right thing. He will have to act on his own initiative and he will have proclamations issued and recalled and amended every few years. He comes here with a planless Bill without detail. Why? Because he says there is a crisis. But we know very well that the crisis has been there for years; we know that the Minister had the time available and that he could make no plans. He frankly stated that he did nothing under these circumstances and that he was frustrated by this one or that one. He wants to assume the rôle of a legislator when Parliament does not sit, and he also wants to use those powers. I still think that if this were the beginning of the Session and not the end of it, the Minister would withdraw the Bill and he would introduce a Bill providing for every essential measure so that the country would know what awaits it. Now we come to the end of the Session. Was that done intentionally? What did we do for the rest of the Session? We spoke about Dongola. We had to listen to childish talk.

And gossip.

Yes, that also. And at the end of the Session the Minister introduces this Bill. He is practically holding a pistol to our heads and saying that there is a crisis and we must pass the Bill. The time has arrived that Minsters should do their work in the recess so that we can receive the Bills by November. The country today does not know what the position is, and members do not know what the position is, and at the last moment important legislation is foisted on to us. As regards the powers given to the commission, they are not actually powers which are granted, but they are powers which the Minister still has to define in his proclamation. We do not know what they are but we say that we can more or less have the tendency to give the commission the power to build dwellings, to prepare schemes and to build and to obtain the material and fittings required for that purpose. We were not told whether or not control would remain in existence, but now that the Minister has spoken we know what awaits us. His controllers are going to remain there. They will suppress private initiative to build a house of limited space—I am not talking about a luxurious house but about a limited house—throughout the country. If the Minister continues to control as he is doing today he will be making the building of houses more difficult and not easier. The Minister referred to red tape. We know what difficulties exist throughout the country when people want to build houses. The Minister did not tell us that he will make it simpler and easier, so that a man can walk in with his plans and say that he wants a permit because the building is within the limits laid down. Oh no. Will the speculative builders still have the opportunity to build numbers of houses while the private person who asks for a permit has difficulty in obtaining it? In all the years of difficulty in the Cape while there was building control we were never without houses which were being built in rows by speculative builders, not for persons who applied for houses because they had none in which to live, but houses built purely for speculative purposes. As soon as the first house had reached a certain height, they commenced building the second. A “for sale” notice was put up and as soon as the first one was sold they started building the third and so they went along the line. It is control which made it possible for misuse to be made of the control authorities. It was a scandal in South Africa and it remains a scandal.

Is it not a question of the use to which the house is put?

Not as long as the private individual who wishes to build cannot receive a permit while the speculator can receive a permit. Those houses were not simple houses. They were houses costing £2,500. Can we say that we must permit houses of £2,500 to receive preference while the man who wants to build a house of £1,200, or £1,500 or £1,800 cannot receive a permit? If under this Bill we must continue with that sort of control which puts powers into the hands of the controllers, if permits have to be issued under that system which is inexplicable to us, the country is lost and we are no better off. The Minister did not put into prospect that thousands of houses of a certain size and to a certain value could be built by any private person without his having to run round for months and months in order to get the approval of one or other controller. The Minister speaks about 12,000 houses which are absolutely essential.

That was the former plan, but I made no suggestion.

I say that private people will build thousands of houses provided things are made simple so that money is made available for individuals also and that initiative is not killed by the same sort of control as that which exists now. It is clear to me that the Minister is going to control all building material still more strictly than before. If he is going to control it in order to make use of it immediately I have no objection, but what happens under control? Under control they hold back the material. People have to come and plead; sometimes one has to do other things also in order to obtain a little material; sometimes one has to use other methods also. If the Minister can give us the assurance that all the material which he vaguely states he will take over for the building of houses will immediately be made available for building purposes, we say that it is at least an assurance on the part of the Minister that they will not keep back material and make it difficult for people to build. That is one of the most essential things. I cannot say that that should be inserted in the Bill, because this is no Bill. It is a Bill which asks powers for the Minister to do just what he wishes to. All we can do is to indicate to the Minister the impossible things he must not do. He has the power to do it; he can do with us just what he likes.

He is a little Hitler.

I am quite in favour of it that extraordinary powers should be obtained, but they must be obtained through Parliament and not by way of emergency regulations. It was a somewhat unfortunate remark by the Minister—and I myself made it yesterday during the discussion of the Bill—that it is only an extension of Emergency Regulations. He now empowers himself to continue by means of those methods in one sphere. We know that extraordinary powers ought to be obtained, but the Minister ought to obtain those powers through Parliament. The next matter with which I wish to deal is that of the expropriation of ground. The Minister may evidently, before we meet again, expropriate the ground of any private person by means of the powers he now asks for. He may chase a private person off the ground on which he now lives. If that had been laid down in the Bill and we knew under what circumstances people may be chased off the ground on which they live, we could criticise it, but today we do not know in the least under what circumstances expropriation may take place. The Minister will say that we must trust him. I would trust the Minister sooner if he were to say that he will expropriate no private ground. I do not think he will get very far with that. The population will not be satisfied with the manner in which he proposes to do it, because they will say that it is not being done by virtue of an Act of Parliament; it is only justified by an Act of Parliament. If the Minister should do things which interfere with private interests—and the private interests not of the big people but of the small man—the people will say that he is not doing so by virtue of the power he received through Parliament, but by virtue of an Act under which he assumes that power to himself. The goal at which the Minister aims is the goal we want to reach. I have not much to say about the compensation the Minister will pay for ground. I think his object is not to pay too much but to pay a fair price for the ground. Unfortunately we have had cases in the history of South Africa where Departments have been authorised to expropriate and to purchase certain grounds, cases where often there were other motives. We do not wish to be put into the position of coming to Parliament next year or the year after to ask why £12,000 was paid to a certain person while the ground was worth only £2,000. That person perhaps had influence and he had some reason why he did not wish to sell, with the result that perhaps he was paid too much. We will perhaps later find that certain influential companies received much more money than they ought to have had.

But the compensation is laid down in the Bill.

The basis of compensation is laid down in the Bill. But take this case. Supposing I bought my ground 20 years ago. Can I then charge 6 per cent. interest for 20 years on the price I paid, plus the purchase price?

It then falls under the other alternative, the last municipal valuation plus 30 per cent.

I take it that the Minister can regulate it by proclamation as he likes.

No, the provisions are now contained in the Bill.

Therefore I say again that we do not want disappointments later in the matter by discovering that things are done contrary to the provisions of the Bill. Another question we wish to touch upon is that of the apprenticeship of people in the building industry. The Minister said that he wishes to make provision to people of different races to be trained to build houses in the areas where that particular race lives. We on our side must accept that as a sound principle, but we want the assurance that the Minister will see to it that for instance the natives who are trained to be employed in housing schemes for natives will not later compete with European labourers, that they cannot compete in the same area with European workers and even with coloured workers when that period is passed.

I agree.

How are we going to safeguard the position? We should like to know how we can safeguard the position. We cannot bear to think that large numbers of natives will be trained as artisans in the building industry. We do not want those natives later to compete with European workers in the same area.

Do not the trade unions prohibit that?

If those people are trained on the same basis and are qualified and accepted as artisans, it is not prohibited.

But then you have to pay him the same wage.

We want the assurance that the artisans trained in this way will not compete with the European artisans and coloured artisans in their own areas and on their own terrain. We now come to the power taken by the Minister as regards local committees. The Minister takes this power to act in the case where a local committe does not want to execute a building scheme which is essential for its particular area and to have this done by the commission or through one or other company empowered by the commission. But now the Minister also assumes the power to prescribe what sort of local tax may be paid on that scheme. In other words, he can issue a Proclamation to say that the valuation placed by the Municipality on that scheme will not be the valuation on which they will pay rates. That is so. The Minister has the power to go over the head of the local committee and practically to fix the rate, and the reason why we want to discuss that is the following: When the local authority must provide services for the people living in that area, how can the Municipality provide services like water, light and health services if that municipality has no authority over the rates? I want to tell the Minister frankly that he has not put that very clearly, but then he put nothing clearly in the Bili. I think I am right when I say that the Minister has the power to impose differential rates on particular building schemes in any given municipality, and if that is so he must of course expect that sooner than have the assistance of the local committee he will have a local committee up in arms against him if he in any way indicates that he will use those powers, because the municipalities today already experience great difficulty in regard to Government properties which are situate in the municipal area. The municipality does not draw rates from those properties of the Government and finds it very difficult to keep its finances in order—very often because the Government has many properties there on which the municipalities cannot levy rates. If the schemes fall under that category, where the Government pays too little in rates in regard to Government property, it will create an impossible position for the local authority. Then we come to the advances of money. The commission will have the power to advance money to private persons and to building societies. When the Minister refers to building societies I do not know whether he includes under that other institutions which also provide money for the building of houses, not on the same basis on which the building societies do it, but in many cases on a much sounder basis. It is unfortunately the case that the building societies in recent times have been willing to advance money on houses to an amount which sometimes exceeded the real value of that house. Now the Minister is going to empower the commission to advance money to building societies to be lent to people who wish to build houses, and evidently the Government will provide the security for the further loan on the building. We must be very careful to see that this does not lead to people paying too much for their houses because too much money is offered to them. The Minister says that they will first try to discover by way of experiment what the contract price ought to be.

To fix on a reasonable price.

In the same way control will have to be exercised in connection with the money advanced by building societies and I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will provide the same facilities to other companies and societies who also advance money for the building of houses, and not only to building societies alone, because the other companies in many instances perform the same sort of function in the same way as the building societies. In the end the Minister must of course salve his conscience a little and bring the House under the impression that he is responsible to the House and he therefore proposes that all the proclamations and regulations should be laid on the Table of the House within a fortnight of the commencement of the Session, and obviously after millions of pounds have been spent he comes to Parliament, and one or other House of Parliament can decide that some or other regulation should be disapproved of. We want to know how we can vote money for the programme of the following year if the Minister does not give an indication of how much loan funds will be used in the course of the year.

There is £5,000,000 on the loan vote at the moment.

That £5,000,000 has then been voted and may of course not be exceeded, or if it is exceeded we must afterwards authorise it. Has the Minister already made provision in the Estimates for the current expenses he proposes to make in connection with the training of apprentices and in connection with the functions of the Boards; has he made provision for the finances required to put the Act into effect? We have no idea of what it will cost because the Minister himself does not know. All these are matters Parliament would have liked to know, but the Minister has made everything so involved that one practically has to move a special motion in the House in order to upset a regulation. If the Minister issues such a regulation, his side of the House can oppose that regulation, but will they vote against it? In the last few days we had the greatest trouble in getting three or four or five of the Minister’s side of the House to remain outside when the vote was taken which they disapprove of, but they did not really vote against the Government. There is much more we would like to say and which will be said from this side of the House because we feel that things are done in the matter contrary to the interests of Parliament; practically against the authority of Parliament powers are granted which derogate from the authority of Parliament. We shall have more to say about it from this side of the House without, of course, trying at this late stage to wreck the measure. We recognise the critical condition existing in the country, but we have recognised it for four years and spoken about it. We did everything in our power to try to avoid the crisis. The Minister tells us that the building industry does not take on enough apprentices, but the Minister connived in that. The Minister said that these people must wait until the soldiers return from the war. The interests of the country were played with, and the interest of the nation which needs houses, not to mention other matters, and the Minister today asks for powers which we recognise he ought to have but which he ought to have received through Parliament, and we say that if there were time the Minister should have withdrawn this Bill and really come before the House with the Housing Bill which the country requires, and we say that the Minister is given such powers here that it is dangerous to the interests of the population. In conclusion I wish to express the hope that if the Minister receives these powers he will use them in such a way that houses are actually built. An Act by itself does not build houses. It takes a sense of organisation and the ability to organise, and it is essential that the Minister shall keep a watchful eye open day and night to see that no single hour passes in which the organisation is not put to work and kept at work, and all we can say is that next year when we meet again we will expect the Minister to tell the country that he has not sat still during this time but that he kept the organisation busy day and night and really managed to do something to solve the housing need which exists. I hope that the Minister will see to it that next year we shall not come here and have to say that this measure and the powers now taken by the Minister also led to nothing and that the housing need is just as great as it was before. We do not want to hamper this measure because it is our policy to build houses for the people. But I should like to issue another warning to the Minister. We do not want to see the Minister building houses for natives in areas where they should not be and where there is no work for them. We do not want him to build houses in the Western Province for people for whom there is no work and who should not really be here just because there are scandalous conditions on the Cape Flats because 20,000 to 30,000 more natives streamed in here than can be employed. It is just as much the duty of the Minister to see to it that the Minister of Native Affairs obtains the necessary powers in the same way to prevent these people coming into areas where there is no work for them, because we cannot afford to build houses for people in areas where they should not be and where there is no work for them. I come then to another matter. We want the Minister to continue, where he builds houses for Europeans, coloureds and natives, to keep those areas separate as was the case in the past. There must be separate residential areas so that separate residential areas will one day be an accomplished fact in South Africa as regards coloured, natives and Europeans. We thus want to insist upon it that the Minister should see to it that these areas are kept entirely separate.

I rise to support very strongly the Minister in the powers he asks for. The only fault I find with this Bill is that it is rather overdue. I feel that when the Minister came to the House last year he should have asked for such powers in view of his previous experience and difficulties with local authorities. I also feel that in coming to the House last year he came with the gloves stuffed with cotton-wool instead of a horse-shoe in it to deal with certain local authorities. I do not think we should blame the Minister or the Housing Commission for not having delivered the goods so far, because his main difficulties have been with certain local authorities. The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Gray) said: “Speak for Pretoria.” Well, he must not anticipate that I am going to blame Johannesburg on the question of local authorities being 100 per cent. to blame. I was, in fact, going to refer to Pretoria. I feel that even if local authorities like Pretoria have their difficulties, I am certain that the hon. member for Kensington is not going to blame the Minister. I feel that unless this House agrees to give the Minister the authority he is asking for, the most urgent need of the people of the country will not be met. I want to put before the House the position of Pretoria. Unless the Minister gets these powers, Pretoria, with its population of over 100,000, will not get the houses the people are crying out for. The Pretoria local authority has so far only agreed to build 100 sub-economic houses. Notwithstanding the Minister’s statement in this House on previous occasions and again this morning, after meeting the local authorities from all parts of South Africa and an agreement having eventually been arrived at that the Government would meet the losses on a basis of 2 to 1, the evidence is that if they are to proceed with the full housing scheme programme, their losses, which will have to be met by the ratepayers of Pretoria, would amount to at least £100,000 per annum, and the City Council of Pretoria is not in the financial position to meet it. The Minister, having come to an honourable agreement with the S.A. Municipal Association, I do feel that they as one of the team—and there may be other members of the team elsewhere in the country—are not playing cricket by holding the pistol to the Minister’s head. When it became known that the Minister intended asking for these powers, to get the Commission to build houses where the local authorities failed, a decision was taken by the Pretoria City Council that the Minister should get on with the job. That clearly proves that the local authorities are not prepared to meet their obligations.

They are not able to, in many cases.

If they are not able to, all I can say is that the terms of meeting the losses under the old scheme were very much less favourable than the ratio of losses which the Government is prepared to meet today. As an ex-Councillor I know that on the original sub-economic houses built before the war meant that the local authority had to meet a loss of at least 3½ per cent. per annum. Under this scheme it will be two to one, and I am satisfied that as the local authorities are allowed to raise assessment rates and get a certain rebate, on losses merely a book debt, they will be in a much better position. Unless they are prepared to venture on such a scheme, and after they agreed, following very protracted discussions with the Minister and his officials, I feel it is rather late, at this stage, for them to say the Minister must get on with the job, since they are now not prepared to face possible increased losses. In so far as this House is concerned, we are trying to see that every individual who needs a house should get one, but here again we find the local authority, the Pretoria City Council, not co-operative. According to a Council minute received, they state—

That the Council approach the South African Railways and Harbours Administration and the South African Iron and Steel Industrial Corporation, Limited with a view to ascertaining whether they would be prepared to enter into an agreement with the Council for the erection by the Council of sub-economic houses for their lower-paid employees upon the same basis as the, erection of the 50 sub-economic houses at Atteridgeville for non-European employees of the Railways Administration, viz., that the loss to the council be limited to ⅝ per cent. per annum.

When one knows that the employees of Iscor and the railways with their families represent a big proportion of the population of Pretoria, it is unfair that during the last six years they have not been considered by the Council. I think it is most unfair for ten or twelve thousand railwaymen and their families, some of whom are in dire need of houses, to find a local authority taking up the attitude that the railway administration must build the houses. Where? Do they want railway houses built round about the station and workshops? There is no ground for houses. It is up to the House to support the Minister, especially where the local authorities are not prepared to do the right thing to the people of this country. This is a matter which does not call for party politics. I feel that all parties in this House should give the Bill its fullest support. The Minister has made it very clear that he is asking for authority for the next three years, and I am satisfied that the housing problem is so serious that we should give him a blank cheque and so that all his eggs of difficulty are put into one basket. The question of labour and material for distribution to the various contractors should be dealt with by and through one body. It is only by such means that practical results will be achieved and not merely estimated figures which is all we have had for the last 12 months. The Minister cannot be blamed for the sins and omissions of the local authorities. Promises were given and in some cases sincere efforts were made to fulfil them, but there was the difficulty with the standpoint of trade unions, and I do not blame them, wanting some security for the future. That safeguard is provided for in the Bill and I am pleased to hear from the Minister that he has the fullest co-operation of the trade unions as well as of the building employers. In conclusion I want to appeal to the Minister for that very large section of the community in South Africa who are not provided for under this scheme, in so far as housing to be built by local authorities is concerned. I refer to the middleman. The local authorities’ housing schemes are intended for the sub-economic wage groups. I pointed this out to the Minister in Another Place, but since then many representations have been made to me by people vitally concerned and therefore I wish to raise it again. There is the artisan, the clerk and shop assistant who may be earning £30 to £45 a month. When houses are built, these individuals—and a big percentage of them are homeless today, staying in boarding houses or rooms—will not have houses allocated to them by the local authorities, for the reason that they are earning more than a sub-economic wage. Unless private enterprise helps them they will be left high and dry. I appeal to the Minister to see that something is done for that section of the people. It has been suggested that provision might be made to meet them through the building societies. Well, most of these people have no surplus money; but if generous conditions can be made to meet them I will be most grateful. Failing that, I ask the Minister, when it comes to the question of housing through local authorities, that the Housing Commission will not overlook these people who must be provided for, otherwise they will not have houses allocated to them under the present scheme.

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

This measure we are considering gives the Government, through the hon. Minister, very great authoritarian powers to conduct a war against squalor in South Africa. Only a grave national emergency can make it necessary for us to depart in this way from our democratic way of life. What simply is that emergency? During the next ten years we shall have to build half a million houses in this country; immediately, we need 120,000 for non-Europeans and 30,000 for Europeans. The Minister has in his speech in the House this morning admitted what Dr. Hamlin, previous Director of National Housing, admitted towards the end of last year that at our present rate of building we can build only 12,000 houses per annum. That happens to be just 8 per cent. of our housing needs. Eight per cent. That is the national emergency.

That is national houses, not the total number of houses.

That is the national emergency, with all it involves in poverty, ill-health and crime. We realised this position very definitely in 1944 when we passed the Housing Amendment Act. The Government failed to put that Act into operation. This Bill means, therefore, that from now on the Government is definitely on trial in South Africa. It dare not fail now to meet the desperate needs of our people for proper housing facilities. I want to confine my remarks mainly to one aspect of our housing problem, an aspect I consider most important. It is not explicitly stated in this Bill. The Minister did not refer to it at all this morning. It is not labour, not materials, not land. It is the interest rate. On that depends more than on any other factor the practicability of the scheme introduced to the House today. The interest rate is the key to our housing problem. It determines whether we are going to be able to build houses to be let or to be sold within the economic capacity of the vast majority of our people. Since 1920 high interest rates have caused the failure of our housing plans. All the successive Governments in the country have been equally parties to that failure. The 1920 Housing Act made the first attempt to provide local authorities with funds for housing. The market rates of interest applied, and that made it economically impossible to apply the Act for the housing of the coloured people and the native people. It was not a shortage of artisans, nor of materials, nor of land, nor was it a shortage of money. It was because the money power created a shortage of credit by high interest rates. In 1923 we passed the Urban Areas Act; that stipulated that employers and local authorities would be obliged to house their native workers. The Minister of Native Affairs had ample powers under that Act to enforce this provision. He failed to overcome the interest hurdle; and consequently the natives, out of their poverty, could not carry the economic burden of rent. The Slums Act in 1934 introduced sub-economic rates, and by 1936 the rate for the native had become ¾ per cent. The basic rate of interest, however, still applied, although it was camouflaged; so that and the local authorities and the State shared the losses. The old factors remained. That is to say, the natives, out of their poverty datum wages, could not possibly pay their way; and secondly the money power in the country got its full pound of flesh from the taxpayers and the ratepayers and the non-European occupants of the houses. The interest rate has been the governing factor in all our attempts at meeting the housing needs of our people. It has had a stultifying effect on housing development. The Minister admitted as much when he used these words last year—

That is true. Up to 1944 only 18,660 sub economic houses had been built. I submit that that is a sorry result after 25 years of planning and legislation and Government promises. That is the background to the Bill we are considering today with its implicit high interest rates. We cannot expect to build national houses with an interest rate that is to be 4 or more per cent; that is going to wreck this measure from the very start. I suggest it is not an insuperable difficulty. There is a way by which houses can be built within the economic capacity of the majority of our people to buy or hire. The first step—and this Bill does not give an explicit acceptance of that step—the first step is to accept the principle that for the lower income groups in this country housing must be almost entirely a social service. It can never be put on the usual economic basis. They are too poor to pay the orthodox costs. I again want to quote the Minister in that connection. He said—

Nor can the State or the local authorities on the basis of high interest rates, house the lower paid workers. It might build a native house for £300, but when the interest charge is added to that the rent becomes beyond the capacity of the native to pay. The State might sell him a house for £300 over 30 years. Because of the interest rate he will pay £500 at least for it. That is a burden which we ought to try to relieve in the housing programme. This is well illustrated by what is now known as the Manchester scandal. In 1944 the Manchester Corporation undertook to build a block of 150 working-class flats. The total cost was to be just over £67,000. In the Housing Revenue Account of the Corporation they had the money, and they wished to build these flats for cash. The British Ministry of Health intervened and refused them permission to pay in cash and obliged them to borrow the money at interest; they will have to repay not £67,000 but £170,000, involving an extra £113,000 which will have to be extracted from the ratepayers and the general taxpayers. Now, that same position can arise in connection with the housing programme we are considering today. I think we must courageously face the fact that we must have special financial arrangements, special financial machinery, to provide for the lower income groups, i.e.’ those who earn say, less than £20 a month. The housing schemes would of course be allocated to them according to their race groups and the national houses built under the scheme would vest in the Housing Commission. This is my point. For the construction of these houses the Commission should provide adequate funds at a maximum rate of interest of 1 per cent. The houses could be hired, or better still, purchased on a home-ownership plan over a period of say 30 years. The latter plan is highly desirable. It lessens the liability of the local authority and it promotes, as no other influence can, the social uplift of the people. Now the Minister will ask me where he will get this cheap money from, and my answer is this. He spoke about emergency measures. He spoke today about employing the extreme authority given to him under this Bill, and has asked the House to give him these powers, powers probably greater than any Minister has had in this country even during the war. When he asks where the money is coming from my reply is: Use the same authority over the money power in this country— and it is a very real power—as you propose to use in the case of land and artisans. Get loans from the Central Bank on the same basis, on the basis of the national credit, that is the productive capacity of the country, as the Minister of Finance now gets some millions of pounds for short periods at 1 per cent. Special financial arrangements of that nature can be made. In fact, the money can be created by the Central Bank in just the same way as the commercial banks are today creating extra purchasing power, on security, by means of overdrafts. In my view there is no fundamental difference at all between the two systems. We can get over a period of years a loan of £20,000,000 from the Central Bank. The interest charge to the country would be not more than £200,000 per annum and the capital debt would be repaid out of rents and out of the redemption payments over the period the debt becomes self-liquidating. I want to say that I do not think this measure, much as we want it to be a success, will be so unless we contrive to get our money either at 1 per cent. or free of interest for the lower income groups. Provided this cheap money is used only for national housing, there would be no competition with the ordinary money market or existing rates of interest. It is only on such an almost non-interest bearing basis that we can build the national houses we now require. Local authorities, utility companies and even the State could then get on with the building programme without incurring a heavy debt burden over a long period. Now there is also a special group for which provision is being made today by some of the municipalities, under their economic housing schemes, limited, I believe, to an average house valued at £2,000. For these people, and especially in this group come the ex-servicemen, the State should undertake to provide funds at not more than 2½ per cent. Spread the payment over 30 years; and the Government and the local bodies might well be expected to bear whatever losses are incurred. The deposit on the capital sum, as far as the ex-volunteer is concerned, could be arranged with the Directorate of Demobilisation to the extent of using the grant of £250 for that purpose. I believe that is being done. Side by side with this form of assistance the State can assist those who borrow from building societies by subsidising some portion of their deposit to enable the building societies to lend up to 90 per cent. of the house value. This loan would have to be limited to people whose salaries are not over £600 per annum. There would still remain, in addition to the housing facilities constructed under the special financial system of 1 per cent., and after these other two groups have been provided for, ample opportunity for houses to be built by building societies, insurance companies and by contractors carrying on on normal lines at market prices and market interest rates. My contention, in conclusion, is this, that if the provisions of this Bill which the country will welcome wholeheartedly are governed fundamentally by special interest rates on the lines I have set out, particularly for national housing, I believe that the intentions of the Government to provide houses for the people will have every chance of reasonable consummation. I assume also that the Government has the will and the resolution, in view of the Minister’s statement this morning, to build at least 50,000 houses during this year; and in that way make amends to the people for the long years of neglect.

We on this side of the House realise thoroughly the necessity for houses being built. We realise that the position is fairly critical, and we are prepared to extend extraordinary powers to any reliable person to adjust matters. That is perfectly clear. But, Mr. Speaker, although even before the war there was talk about housing this Minister has always felt indifferent about the matter. Eventually the criticism became so serious that the Minister was obliged to make promises to quieten the public, promises that he has not yet been able to carry out. Now the Minister comes here ten days before the end of the Session with a Bill which he himself admits is a blank cheque. This shortage of houses is not a thing of today. The first speech I made in this House was in connection with the question that the municipalities were not building sub-economic houses.

The first speech that I made in the House 16 years ago was also about that.

I am glad to hear that from the Minister. But my speech was in regard to what the Minister now undertakes to do. I said the municipalities had not the funds to build houses and that it was the duty of the State to do so. The Minister was not Minister then, it was Mr. Havenga.

The member for Piketberg (Dr. Malan) was the Minister in 1929.

And what about it?

I am just telling him.

The Minister is trying to play the fool in connection with a serious matter. He can read my speech and he will find this. I said at that time that the State should build the houses and that the municipalities could not do so. I referred to the houses that had been built by the municipality of Smithfield, and which were standing empty. The municipality is only as rich as the poorest man in the community. It is the weak link in the chain. If the municipality has to pay for the deficit it means that the taxpayers of the municipality must do it. Last year it was admitted for the first time by the Minister that the municipalities could not do this work, and now he comes and asks us for a blank cheque. But what are his plans, and why does he not submit them to us? He simply tells us that the situation is critical. What does he regard as the number of houses he will be able to build in a year, and how many does he intend to build in three years’ time; how many aliens are there in the country, and how many of these aliens will have to leave the country in a short while? He must make clear to us what this critical situation is, and then he should describe to us what his plans are. It does not help matters for the Minister to come along and tell us that there is an adequate quantity of building material in the country; we know there is not enough. There are thousands of private people who wish to build their houses with their own money. They cannot get the material. In the second place, they are up against the mess that has been caused by the building controller, a mess so great that they cannot get permits. In addition to that, the people do not wish to build houses with this expensive material which would not be considered a payable proposition in normal times. We should not lose our balance. People talk about £150,000,000 having to be expended on housing, and such things. We have neither the men nor the material to do this. The Minister should tell us clearly what the prospects are of obtaining material and how much we have already in the country. Does he realise that even municipalities which have erected sub-economic houses have been thwarted by the building controller. Local authorities such as municipalities are simply unable to proceed with the work, and in regard to sub-economic houses they cannot utilise proper building material. There are no flooring boards in the houses, it is just cement and such stuff. There is no corrugated iron and thatch must be used for the roof. All sorts of substitute materials have to be used. The baths are of cement the stoves are very poor contraptions and they will not last long. All these things arise in connection with building schemes, and we should like the Minister to tell us clearly what the position is now. The Minister admits that these powers he is requesting are much larger than the powers any Minister has yet asked for. He wants us to vote for that. These are powers that one can give only to a reliable person. I would only give someone I trust well a blank cheque, and then he would have to give me the requisite justification. We say this about the Minister, that he should clarify his schemes, stating how many houses will be built, how many workers he has, what his plans are, and how many houses he intends to complete in a year. We want to know whether he has the building material and what his prospects are of getting it. He should not come along with these stories about 100,000 houses in a year. It all sounds very well, but we know these things are impossible. The Minister has been cogitating for long over this Bill, and I am at a loss to understand that he should have brought so little to light after hatching plans for so long. About three weeks ago we were informed that this Bill would comprise 50 pages, and that it would contain 150 clauses. Now we get this little Bill which simply says that the Minister is taking all the power into his hands, that he is empowered to break the law, that he may expropriate any land, and all these things. He merely wants to tell the municipalities that he is going to build the houses for the people but that they must understand that they will not be entitled to levy rates on those properties, but on the other hand they will be obliged to provide all the services that they give to the ratepayers. It is impossible for me to realise that the Minister should in this light-hearted way, without having any scheme before us, so that we can understand what line he is going to take, can expect that we should vote for such a Bill to give him this power to do what he likes. The hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) has already said that this Bill gives more power to the Minister than this House has ever previously conferred on the Minister. But instead of the Minister giving us a clear exposition of how he is going to use the powers that he desires, he does not submit any of the plans on which he is engaged, but he simply asks that we should adopt a Bill which gives him the power, by way of proclamation to assume powers which nullify all the laws that this Parliament has made in the past. He has told us that these matters will again come before Parliament and that Parliament will then have the regulations at its disposal to enable us to say whether they should rightly stand or not. Of what use is that? The Minister will use his majority in the United Party even if he has violated rights; and even if Parliament should decide that those powers should be rescinded it does not assist us because the schemes will be in progress. His people will be obliged to vote for him. The position is moreover this. This Government has always intimated that it is in favour of separate residential areas. Even the Minister of Finance has said that, though he added that we on this side wished to chase the people in the various camps while they wished to create separate residential areas by means of housing schemes. The Minister of Welfare knows the Cape Peninsula. He should go to Kalk Bay and see where the municipality has erected big blocks of flats, better flats than many Europeans have, for the coloured people. They built them in the best residential area of Kalk Bay amongst the Europeans. In this Bill there is no provision made that the schemes should follow the principle of separate residential areas. We have a municipality like Cape Town, where the coloureds and the Europeans ought to be apart, that is going to spend £1,000,000 on housing schemes, and it is building places where the coloureds will be living amongst the Europeans as they do in these particular places at Kalk Bay. They simply want to be there, although the municipality wish to give them a place nearer Cape Town. If we allow this sort of thing we are going to make this residential intermingling even worse, and what hope have we of getting these matters right in the future. I should like to know from the Minister whether when State money is used for housing he will lay down that there should be separate residential areas. He should tell us today if it is a serious matter to him and the Government, that there should be separate residential areas and whether he is going to apply it in connection with these housing schemes.

Do you mean under compulsion?

I should like to know whether the Government is going to encourage separate residential areas by carrying out separate housing schemes.

Do you mean by compulsion?

I did not say a word about compulsion. The Government has always stated it does not want compulsion in connection with separate residential areas, but that it must be achieved by separate housing schemes. Now I ask whether the Minister is going to follow that principle in connection with these schemes.

Yes, that has always been our principle.

I want to know whether we can definitely take that to be so.

Yes, certainly.

I wanted to know this because it has not been set down in the Bill. I want to know why it has been taken up in the Bill.

Because they say one thing and want to do the other.

I shall refer to the Bill and see whether it is necessary to propose an amendment, and that is why I asked whether the Minister was prepared to apply that principle. If he is prepared to do this I think we should make it clear in the Bill itself. The position is that we have received this Bill in the closing stages of the Session. We have had no opportunity to study the Bill properly. We have only been able to read it through a few times. The only impression we have gained so far is that the Minister is taking wide powers and that he can do anything in connection with this matter. I am not prepared to accept that where a housing scheme has been devised the municipality should be compelled to give all those people the usual services, and that it should not have the right to charge them with rates. If the State undertakes the construction of houses, and this is necessary as I have said, it should so build the houses that those people can pay for the services they enjoy, and we should not say that because the Government or one commission or another has built the houses it is not necessary for these people to pay rates. It is unreasonable to expect anything of that sort. It will mean that the poor man, who has already built his house, will have to pay rates to provide another poor man with services though he does not pay rates himself. We must take serious note of this matter. We shall, of course, have another opportunity in discussing the Bill to go further into it. I have already said that we should not lose our balance in connection with this matter. We are engaged here in launching schemes, and we must have the workers to carry out the schemes. The Minister has admitted that we have not sufficient workmen. He has also blamed the master builders for not having taken on sufficient apprentices. I do not want them to engage apprentices if we will not have work for them. We do not want half baked tradesmen either for whom there will be no work after three or four years. I understand that the Government is going to give a guarantee to the builders. They are not going to give the proper wage in connection with apprentices unless they receive compensation for that. We cannot expect a tradesman who has taken six months to learn his work to be able to compete with one who has taken three years to do so. This will later have repercussions on wages. I should like the Minister to tell us what the position is. I understand he has given these people a guarantee that the artisans will have employment for ten years. I should like to know from the Minister whether this is so or not. I should like to emphasise another aspect of the matter, and that is that in any scheme the Minister ought to make provision that the poorest person in the State will be in a position to become the owner of the house he has rented. However little the man can pay off we must put him in a position to do that, because I can give the Minister the assurance that for poor people home-ownership is a thing of great value. It has a very good reaction on their feelings as citizens of the country when they own their home. It is an excellent thing for every citizen to possess his own house. Even in the case of sub-economic houses the poor people should be given an opportunity to buy their own houses. This will teach them to save small amounts and to make provision against their old age. Eventually it will make them very useful citizens. I want again to ask the Minister whether it is the case that the tradesmen have a guarantee that work will be provided for them for ten years. The Minister does not reply, and I must therefore accept that this is the case.

I shall reply at the end of the debate. I am not under cross examination now.

I put a question politely to you and I thought that you would give a polite answer.

I shall answer politely.

At the moment you have not answered politely, but rather impolitely. The position is that the Minister gave a promise to the artisans or made an agreement with them, that they would be provided with work for ten years from the commencement of this Act or of any scheme that he plans with them. It has been stated that an agreement has been made, and I should like to know from the Minister whether he is going to have work for these people for ten years. Is his plan so worked out that there will be work for ten years, providing people with houses? I said at the outset, and I wish to repeat, because apparently the hon. Minister made no note of it, that the Minister should be so good as to tell us how many aliens there are in our country who will have to leave the country.

If they are builders we shall be able to use them.

I assume that the hon. member can use them, but I am not speaking about that. It is important, however, that a number of aliens will be leaving the country. You cannot go into an hotel where you do not find numbers of them, Russians and all sorts, from all parts of the world. I assume they will take their departure from the country, and that will mean that a considerable amount of accommodation will be made available. You find some of these people in practically every village. Even in a village such as I am living in there are a few houses in the occupation of aliens who will leave when the war is over. There are amongst others a number of child refugees from England, and I take it they will return to their parents. Then these houses will be vacant and it will help to alleviate the housing shortage. Has an estimate been made of the number of houses that will have to be built in all these circumstances. I should further like to ask whether any return has been prepared of the quantity of building material in the country? In a critical period such as this it would be a very good thing if the Government could obtain a return of all available building material in the country, and commandeer it and utilise it for houses, provided that the person who is in charge of distributing the building material does the work in a proper way, and does not allow it to be used for building a cinema, as happened at Kimberley, or in building a number of holiday houses at Hermanus, but for dwelling houses that are really required. I should also like to point out that the people who fare badly under all these housing schemes are those in receipt of from £15 to £25 a month. The very poor people are provided for with sub-economic houses. At Robertson some of these houses are rented at £1 16s. 0d. per month. They are nice houses with four to five rooms. They have, it is true, a thatched roof, but it is a fine roof. There are no flooring boards, but some composition, and the bath is an iron one. They are however nice dwelling houses. They say that the houses are not only comfortable but pleasant to live in, being neither too cold in the winter nor too warm in the summer, thanks to the thatched roof. I plead specially for the people who are in the Government service, customs officials, magistrates’ clerks and that sort of people. Most of them are married and they come into a town and cannot find accommodation, and are compelled to go to an hotel. Their income is not such that they can afford that and they have to make all sorts of plans to get accommodation. Can the Government not contrive a plan under this scheme to build houses in all the towns for public servants and workmen in the employ of the Government? The housing shortage will immediately be relieved to a certain extent because people like letting houses to this class of people as they have a fair salary, are good tenants and can pay. But now there are people who are willing to pay more and the officials are unable to find accommodation. In my village there have been two instances. An excise man had to obtain a farm house a mile or two outside the town as a residence, and an assistant magistrate had to send his wife and children to his parents’ farm because he could not find any other accommodation. Eventually he found a place but that meant that someone else who hoped to get it was without a house. This is the opportune time, now that there is a shortage of houses to build houses for these people, and in that way bring relief which will assist considerably in ensuring that people have houses. In conclusion I should just like to inform the Minister that I do not think—I may be wrong—that if we want to give anyone a blank cheque to handle any matter we should want to give it to him.

Let me say at the outset how much my Party welcomes this Bill. We welcome it particularly because it appears to be a measure which at long last is going to get some houses built and we welcome it with some pride on our part that after 30 years of propaganda on the part of the Labour Party the Government has at long last admitted that the responsibility of building houses is a responsibility that must be assumed by the Government itself. The admission of that principle is a great step forward in the actual building of the houses, because for so many years—and here I admire the temperateness of the Minister this morning—the buck has been passed from the municipalities to the provincial councils and from the provincial councils to the Government, and from the Government back to the various governing bodies whose duty it was to build houses in the past. I believe the Minister will have been entitled to have gone a little further and placed some strictures on the municipalities. It has not been my attitude in Parliament to gloss over the responsibilities held by certain individuals, and I am not sure, even at this late stage, that the Minister is taking the right course when he berates municipalities as little as he did this morning. I place the responsibility for the appalling slums more directly on the shoulders of the municipalities. The responsibility for the shortage of housing is complicated to a certain extent by the war conditions, but the responsibility for the most terrible slums found anywhere in the wide world does rest primarily, I might almost say purely and simply, on the shoulders of the municipalities. The municipalities of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility for the slum conditions that exist in those cities today, and I believe the Minister could possibly have made that a little more clear because even in the powers he now asks for he is going to allow the municipalities to exercise these powers up to a point, and only when they have failed to exercise these powers is he prepared to step in and exercise them himself. I am a little dubious whether that attitude will be sufficient to stir many of our municipalities out of their lethargy and apathy. In the five points given to the Minister by his new Director of Housing as being responsible for the position, apathy was placed No. 5; I should be inclined to place it No. 1 as far as the municipalities are concerned. I think it is a rather mild term, because in most instances it seems to me there has been something approaching a deliberate policy of sabotage. Incidentally I notice the new Director of Housing did not put in a single reason that might have been advanced, namely the interest of vested interests in many of the larger centres; both land interests and building interests have contributed in no small measure to the very difficult position at present.

Was not the director a mayor?

This is a rather alarming interjection, that the Director of Housing is an ex-mayor so he should know all about it.

No, he is not.

The point is vested interests have played a considerable part in the retarding of housing schemes. Vested interests in the shape of the large builders and the speculative builders have been anxious on many occasions to see municipal schemes have not been brought forward. Another form of vested interests in the shape of building societies have also played their part in the retarding of the housing of the people in so far as they have always fought, as witness the exhibition we have had in the last four Sessions with the Durban Municipal Banking Bill—against the grant of loan facilities apart from themselves, and they have fought to retain interest rates as high as they possibly can. The Minister has come before this House and asked this House to give him in this very difficult position very extensive, very extreme and very arbitrary powers. He justifies that because of the extreme peril of the present position, and asks us to trust him, to give him a blank cheque, and he promises if we do give him these powers he is prepared to use these powers almost, as the old Salvation Army preacher said “to the uttermost”. I am not so sure that there is any necessity for the Minister to make any apology of that description. We know Parliament has been disturbed in the last few Sessions at the extra-Parliamentary Government that has been growing up. We know Parliament has been becoming, and quite rightly, in the last few Sessions more jealous of Parliament’s own powers and place in the Government of the country, and during this Session on occasion the House has shown clearly to the Government we are getting a little tired of these extra governmental bodies that are growing up almost week by week during the Parliamentary Session. I believe I am expressing the temper of the House, unanimously, when I say the time has come when a halt should be called to these things and when the prerogatives of Parliament should be restored.

Are you reflecting on your own party?

I hardly think it necessary to discuss the point with the hon. member for Namaqualand (Lt.-Col. Booysen). I suggest that the Minister has now an opportunity to combine the two things. There is no particular reason why the powers he now asks for in this Bill should be exercised, apart from any kind of Parliamentary control. Now, I believe, is the opportunity in a Bill of this description to bring into force a line of policy I have advocated many times in this House, and which I believe is subscribed to by a considerable number of members in this House, namely, that Parliamentary control or a measure of Parliamentary control should not necessarily cease when Parliament is prorogued at the end of the Session, that Parliamentary control should continue during the recess, and here is an opportunity where I believe the Minister can say truly to Parliament: I am asking you for these powers; these are powers I ask you as Parliament to delegate to me to be used; they are very strong and arbitrary powers, but during the process of using them I am still prepared if not to continue to have some kind of Parliamentary control at least to have some kind of Parliamentary advice. My first suggestion is that a Select Committee of this House should be appointed. The Minister asked for powers, so surely a Select Committee can also have additional powers. This committee should function during the recess for the specific purpose of studying the matter and being taken into the confidence of the Minister when the particular regulations are being framed. I have said so often, that all the Sessional Select Committees should continue to function during the recess, and one of their chief duties should be the scrutinising of regulations made under the various Bills we passed in connection with these various departments. The hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) showed very clearly in a speech he made some time ago in dealing with this particular subject that various countries have set up particular bodies which study the regulations made under a particular Bill. But I am only appealing now in connection with this one measure because the House has never before been asked to give the Minister a blank cheque of this description, which is carrying on the war-time Emergency Regulations in peace time. It is very necessary. I do not think there is any member in this House who does not think the powers should be exercised, but I believe as Democrats we are afraid of creating a precedent, and we are entitled to ask some kind of safeguard should be set up. I believe the Minister or the Government can find it possible to set up a Select Committee which shall have extended powers and be permitted to sit during the recess, and be permitted possibly to exercise a restraining influence in the exercise of these regulations. If that cannot be done I think at the very least the Minister ought to agree to the setting up of a Parliamentary advisory board or council or committee, which will have something to say not necessarily in the framing of the regulations but on the effect they will have. I am not particularly concerned as to how the Minister uses his powers in respect of limiting the profits to 6 per cent., but I am concerned as to how the Minister may use his powers in regard to the regulations which are going to give him overriding power over the employees in the building industry. Incidentally let me say that I believe this House has to pay a tribute to the building industry which has apparently been regarded to accept regulations of this kind. I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the present position of the artisans in the building industry is not something which has taken place in the last few weeks. Their conditions have not been gained out of the clouds but are the result of many years of bitter strife, and these men are entitled to the fullest possible protection in order to see that the conditions they have managed to gain for themselves through their own efforts and through their many bitter years of struggle should not be lightly taken away from them. I can say that if the regulations framed to deal with the labour side of the housing question are not administered in a reasonable manner quite a deal of trouble may result. The artisan does not take lightly to being ordered about. The engineering artisans during the war period have allowed themselves to be conscripted in the interests of the war effort. In fact the building artisans are going to allow themselves to be conscripted in the working out of what I might call the peace effort. Therefore they are entitled to the fullest protection. If the arbitrary powers are going to be used in an arbitrary fashion—I do not say it will happen but it is a possibility—if these powers granted to the commissioner are going to be used in a fashion where the commissoiner does not have the fullest possible sympathy with the workmen themselves—we are going to have difficulties. It is no pleasant matter for the Director of Housing to serve a notice on you that you must pack up your belongings and go to another town.

These powers will not be exercised by the Director or the Commissioner of Housing but by a proper authority in the Labour Department.

Supposing we say they will be used by the Director of Manpower, but they will be used all the same. It must be remembered that the Director of Manpower has during the war exercised his authority over the engineering industry not under the Minister of Labour but under the Minister of Defence. Labour has no control over Mr. Ivan Walker in his capacity as Controller of Manpower. I suppose as this Bill is under the aegis of the Minister of Welfare, although I hope Mr. Walker may exercise his control, I do not think he will come under the Minister of Labour but under the Minister of Welfare, who is responsible for housing, and quite rightly too. The Minister of Welfare is responsible and therefore he must have the power to direct the Controller of Manpower, who in turn looks after the distribution of labour. It may not seem an important point I am making. It is possible and it may be necessary for artisans at various times to be transferred at a few moments notice from one town where there is a surplus of labour to perhaps a smaller town where there is a shortage. As the Minister said, they proposed to use the manpower where it is most needed, and to the best purposes. That implies that more or less voluntarily the artisans concerned are more or less conscripted. They can be told to pack up and be sent from ohe town to another town. These regulations will therefore have to be handled very sympathetically. There is no use giving them to the Minister unless they are administered firmly, but there is all the possibility of trouble if they are not applied prudently. I believe the Minister has here a great opportunity not only to be firm and use his arbitrary powers in the direction of building houses, but at the same time to re-establish the authority of Parliament, even under a Bill of this description, by bringing into being either a select committee with extended powers to sit during the recess, or a Parliamentary advisory committee comprised of members of all sides of the House, who will be consulted on the framing of the regulations, or on their operation after they have been framed and who will be able to keep an eye on the administration of the regulations, to whom complaints can be made in the sure knowledge they will be conveyed to the proper quarter and impressed upon the proper authority. The Minister did not elaborate much on the scheme of trainees, and I should like him, in his reply, to do so. Both under the demobilisation proposals and under these proposals this vocational training scheme is beginning to get a little hazy in my mind. I understand the C.O.T.T. scheme has to be continued and has to be extended to the building industry. The Minister seems to be rather dubious as to who is going to train them. Under Demobilisation I understand the scheme is to have a general pool, and from that pool these men are to be paid allowances which I believe are already laid down. I should like to know if, at least in the first instance, as far as the returned soldiers are concerned, the scheme of training will originally not be a scheme under his department but purely under Demobilisation, which we have already provided for; and as far as I remember it was part of the policy of Demobilisation and it was a recommendation that no man would be put into any of these vocational training camps to undergo his original intensive training unless the directorate could guarantee him an apprenticeship when he had done his original training. That at least was the promise given to the ad hoc committee who framed the demobilisation plan, and that I understand is still the policy of the Directorate of Demobilisation. So I am a little hazy as to what precisely the Minister meant when he made a differentiation between apprentices and trainees, and rather suggested it was now proposed to anticipate the position by drafts into the building industry, whereas under the demobilisation plan it was understood that no men would go in for this vocational training and be intensively trained in an artisan occupation unless the directorate could guarantee him an apprenticeship when he had finished his intensive training. The Minister’s statement is that the first 4,000 or 5,000 men who will be trained in the building industry will be returned soldiers, and to those returning soldiers a promise has been given not that they will be trained and then become semi-skilled workers, but that they will receive intensive training and become skilled artisans. The idea is that we will reduce the period of apprenticeship from five years to possibly three years. Where the man has had vast experience in the engineering industry during the war, he will probably only need another 12 months to qualify. But at the moment we are dealing with housing and very few men in the army have had any experience in the course of their military duties in connection with housing, and so one can probably say that the period of apprenticeship will be three years. I would just like the Minister to clear up this point, because this is a Bill for which the country has been waiting. This is a point which is probably going to be greatly misunderstood. This is a Bill which, I am told, may not find such ready general acceptance outside the House as it does inside the House. We have had this housing question before us so long that we, I believe, as a House, are very firm in our conviction that nothing short of a Bill of this description could satisfactorily solve our problems. But people outside the House possibly do not know the provisions of the Bill as well as we do, and I think it would be wise if the Minister cleared up any possible misconception when he comes to make his reply.

I shall be glad to deal with that.

There is not very much more I want to say, but one very important point I wish to touch upon this this. I feel that now that these drastic powers are being given to the Minister that we should be a little more drastic and say to the Government that the time has arrived when this dual control of housing should be abolished. In other words, the time has arrived when we should take the office of building controller away from the Minister of Public Works, and place it in the hands of the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation, who is responsible for housing. Why in the name of goodness it should be necessary for one Minister with his technical advisers, and the Housing Commission to draw up plans for the building of houses, and then have to go along to another Minister who has the glorified title of Building Controller, I do not know.

Why call it a glorified title?

The Minister of Public Works is the only Minister who is a controller. He is the building controller, and I think building control is probably the worst we have had in the war, and that is saying a lot. We find that the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation, having got all his plans made, is dependent upon the material that is going to be released to him by the building controller. During his speech the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation said that the Housing Commission will have the power to buy and hold and stock or pile up reserves of building material. Are they going to be able to do that without the permission of the building controller, or is the building controller going to control stock? Surely we are placing ourselves in a ridiculous position, and what is the justification for having the Minister of Public Works the building controller? There is no justification for it at all. Surely it is the job of the Housing Commission under the Minister, to say whether or not we shall in this country build this magistrate’s court or post office; surely it should be the province of the Minister of Welfare to say: “No, you cannot have a new railway station, or you cannot have a new post office, or a new magistrate’s court, because we must build so many houses by such a time.” We can do without a new public building, but we cannot do without housing. As I gathered, the Minister of Public Works will make the decision for himself as to whether he will build a new gaol or a new magistrate’s court or a new post office without consulting, I understand, the Minister of Welfare who may urgently need the material which is going to be used for his new buildings in order to get on with his building scheme. So I think it is absolutely imperative that the position of building controller should be taken away from the Minister of Public Works and handed over to the Minister of Welfare. It must obviously make for more easy working. It must obviously do away with overlapping, and then, like everybody else, the Minister of Public Works can make his application to the Minister of Welfare and say that he wants so much material for public works, and if the Minister of Welfare says that it can be done, he will probably grant the material. I should imagine that if that was done the Minister of Welfare would probably get a good deal of his own back on the Minister of Public Works. This Bill will give the Minister of Welfare control of the workers; he will have control of the people who sell the building material, and the only thing of which he has not got control is the release of building material. He is subservient to the Minister of Public Works, who can say: “So much I can release, and so much I cannot release.” Actually when the commission put up their schemes from the various municipalities some time ago, the Controller of Building in the person of the Minister of Public Works, cut the whole programme by half by saying: “We can only give you sufficient material to build half these houses”. The fact that less than that was built in no way affects the argument. I gather we are going to make some experiments in building, that we are going to have some experimental houses. I am not referring to experiments in relation to cost, but I gather the Minister spoke of rumble houses. They will probably finish off by being rumble and tumble houses. I gather that the experience in England where they have made experiments in regard to various types of houses, have not been at all satisfactory, and it still remains a fact that the best kind of house is the kind of brick and motar house to which we have been accustomed, and I do not think that in this country the position is so deadly serious as would justify our making too many experiments with other kinds of materials, which in the long run may not be successful. After all, if we are going in for this housing programme in the Union of South Africa, we want to build those houses as well as we possibly can, because one knows that if houses are jerry built, if they are put up in a slip-shod fashion, or if the correct materials are not used, you are in effect only building something which will be a slum in a few years’ time. Houses are built to last, so I will impress upon the Minister not to be carried away by experimentalists in this country. We have been hearing a great deal about pre-fabricated houses, and of other kinds of houses, and I feel that unless it can be shown that those houses are in every way as good as our brick and mortar houses—even as good as our concrete flats—we should not embark upon them in this country because we do not want to build temporary houses in this country.

As a matter of policy we have decided not to build temporary houses.

I was going to elaborate on that, because in Great Britain one of the great points in issue is this question of the temporary house gradually being recognised as a permanent house, and so developing into slums in a very few years. These are a few points I would wish to commend to the Minister in connection with this Bill. I hope he will give serious attention to them, because we feel that this is a very great experiment. It could easily become a dangerous experiment, but with the determination on the part of the Minister to use his powers not only to the limit to which he finds it necessary to build houses, but to use them wisely, we are satisfied that the experiment will be a success, and I am rather inclined to think that if he will give us this form of Parliamentary control, I doubt if the House would be at all anxious to take these powers away from him at the end of three years.

The reception of this Bill by the House will give the country a clear indication that it is regarded as an allParty measure, and it will be so regarded for the reason that the House generally is determined that drastic action shall be taken in connection with the housing situation. It indicates an entirely new basis for domestic legislation and the success of such a measure will depend largely upon the public co-operation in regard to the housing position. I do not think that this is the time to endeavour to apportion blame for the existing unsatisfactory position in regard to houses, or to try and apportion a percentage to municipalities, to the provincial councils and to the Government. I think that would at this stage be an entire waste of our time. Rather should the House and the country be brought to realise not that we need housing but the extent to which at present we can implement the intentions expressed in this Bill. We read in our newspapers about plans being passed by various municipalities for numbers of houses, national houses and ordinary houses, until the public gains the impression that there is early extensive progress in housing in this country, whereas the reverse is the situation, according to the information I have. I say that it is necessary for the Minister to indicate at this stage what housing is likely to result from this measure during the next 12 months, and I would go further; not only should the Minister indicate to this House what is likely to come out of this measure during the next 12 months but, by means of a series of broadcasting articles, he should indicate to the public of South Africa their own responsibility for the better use of the houses that exist at the present time and also the necessity for practically every one of these extraordinary measures which the Government is taking to meet this unique situation. While we have been idealistic in regard to the broad conception of housing for South Africa, it is necessary that this House should retain a measure of balance and be realistic. Figures have been given to us by a committee in regard to the existing shortage of houses in South Africa, and a figure has been mentioned on various occasions of 150,000, 80 per cent. of which are for nonEuropeans. That is an appalling figure in the light of the material and the labour available for the purpose of constructing those houses. But those figures having been quoted, the public are entitled to know what proportion of those houses can be built within, say, a period of three years. The Minister may say that these figures may be regarded as an exaggeration of the actual position, but let us then take a figure of 100,000 instead of 150,000 as the present shortage. Even then the position is alarming, in view of the measures that are practical within the next two years. I would like to call attention to the proportion of the housing shortage in relation to the nonEuropean population, particularly in the urban areas, and I would urge the Minister and those who are responsible for carrying out this programme, to pay due regard to the relative proportions of the needs of the various sections in this country. If 80 per cent. of the shortage is in respect of the housing of non-Europeans—and we know and need no illustration as to the desperateness of the position—then I ask the Government to see to it that that proportion is maintained when making provision for the needs of the people, or at any rate that due significance is given to it. Assuming the figure of 100,000, i.e. two-thirds of the figure stated by the committee ….

That was at the beginning of 1944.

The Minister has indicated the number of houses built during the past 12 months.

About 15,000.

Well, that leaves 135,000. I asked the Minister what the prospects are for 1946 if the powers asked for under this Bill are given effect to. After all, we know that the Minister himself and his Department are governed by the labour and the position in regard to materials, and labour itself is governed by the amount of material available. The Minister of Public Works gave us figures in this House about a week ago in regard to the allocation of building permits for 1945-’46, and presumably those permits had been based upon the material available. He said that permits for all buildings to the value of £35,000,000 will be issued for next year. Of the £35,000,000, 64 per cent. or aproximately £22,000,000 would be devoted to the building of houses, and of the £22,000,000 he gave us a figure of £4,000,000 in respect of the national housing scheme, which I presume is the amount to be allocated for the provision of housing for the non-Europeans. In my opinion that is altogether too small a proportion in view of the existing needs. If one takes these figures and endeavours to ascertain the number of houses that can be built, one comes to the conclusion that the £4,000,000 for the national housing scheme, taking the figure of £300-£350 for a house that the hon. member for Kenington (Mr. Gray) has in mind, we shall have approximately 12,000 houses built, as a contribution towards the 80,000 houses’ actually required. These, I think, are figures that the Minister will confirm. In regard to the other houses, including flats, of a total of about £18,000,000, if one takes a rough figure, one finds that it is probable that equal to between 15,000 and 20,000 houses can be built under that vote. I want to ask the Minister how he proposes to meet the shortage or to what extent it is practicable to meet the shortage. He has made reference to the purchase of materials by the Housing Commission. If he has any information to convey to this House that the figure in regard to material upon which the Minister of Public Works based his statement does not correctly reflect the position, I hope he will make an announcement this afternoon, because even with all the powers provided for in the Bill and the housing possibilities as I have endeavoured to estimate them, I think the public will be disappointed. They will say: You have got all these powers; and you had committees and a commission going into the matter, including the Planning Council; you have had their reports and Parliament has dsicussed the matter ad infinitum, but you have not held out the early prospect of giving the country many houses. That is why I feel that we have to be realsitic. If we cannot do all we would like, let us tell the country what it is expected that the Government will be able to give to the community under this measure and the proportion for those people who relatively are most in need of housing. Then in regard to the new methods of building and the use of new materials, I am not a building expert, and I cannot therefore speak with authority, but I remember a few days ago, the hon. member for Ermelo (Mr. Jackson) presented to this House figures clearly indicating that the Municipality of Ermelo—no mean municipality at all—was building departmentally under the supervision of the town engineer a suitable house at a cost of something like £130. The hon. member showed the House a photograph of the house in question and gave details as to the construction. I would like to know whether the Minister has had a report from the Commission in regard to this House, because I am informed that in Johannesburg you cannot get a house like it under £300. The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Gray) says that the house in Ermelo was built by natives.

For natives.

Well, then the comparison is correct. The house for approximately £300 in Johannesburg is built for natives, and the house in Ermelo for about £130 which is also built for natives. The hon. member for Ermelo also stated that a member of the Housing Commission has visited the house at Ermelo. I should like to know what the opinion of the Housing Commission is. Is the Minister prepared to make a statement in regard to that particular house? Because the Housing Commission has a serious responsibility and the Department concerned cannot be relieved of that responsibility. The country will want to know the reason for the prices of a suitable house for the non-European population in urban areas being £300 and something like £130 on the platteland.

What type of bricks were used for this house?

I do not know, but in any case I am asking the hon. Minister to reply and not the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow).

There is no reason for you to be rude.

It was not my intention to be rude or to be rude to anyone in this House, but the hon. member asks me what bricks were used and I do not know. I repeat that I would like the hon. Minister to tell the country through a series of broadcasts what the position is in regard to housing so that the people may unite with the local authorities in bringing about the great measure of success which the Minister had in mind when he introduced this Bill. Today there are houses in this country that are not occupied. There are houses that are partly occupied, and while the voluntary principle must be maintained in regard to houses that are partly occupied, where houses are standing empty in municipalities, steps should be taken to see that those houses are occupied.

Provision is made for that in the Bill.

I hope the Minister will implement that in the near future. I hope the Minister has these regulations ready and that we will not have to wait for a month or two before they are introduced. I would like the Minister to give the House some indication as to whether these regulations will come into force in the near future.

Most of them are already drafted.

Naturally it is the wish of this Parliament and of the country that at the very earliest moment full provision should be made for our returning soldiers, and we all press for that, but at the same time, I think it would be the wish of the returning soldiers that the needs of the distressed section of the community should be given special consideration to improve their housing position. I refer to the nonEuropeans in some of the urban areas. The House and I am sure, the country will welcome this Bill. The Bill gives the Minister and the Government great powers, but accompanied by those powers is a great responsibility, and we in this Parliament will accept our share of that responsibility and do our utmost to bring this measure to full fruition.

When Parliament is asked, as announced by the Minister, to spend an enormous amount of money on a project of this nature, and when in those circumstances Parliament is asked to pass a measure of this kind, an extraordinary measure in which excessive powers are granted to the Minister concerned, then, in my opinion, Parliament is entitled and very much entitled to receive full information in regard to certain aspects of the matter, and in order to enable Parliament to obtain that information I want to move the following amendment—

1. (a) to make provision in the proposed housing scheme for separate residential areas for Europeans and nonEuropeans; and
2. (b) to restrict such provision to the requirements of Union nationals.”.

In the course of my speech I shall come back to the various points raised in the amendment, and, as the House will notice, these are points of special interest and we are entitled to have a full explanation of what the position in regard thereto is. To begin with I want to say that this side of the House is just as keen and just as anxious, if not keener and more anxious, that the Government should take some steps in connection with remedying the housing position and the state of emergency in the country, remedies which the Government promised us long ago. In recent years we have become more or less accustomed to the Government painting a rosy picture of the special measures that will be taken and of the panacea that will be found as soon as the war is over. We are prepared to support a measure which will make provision for the erection of houses in order to remedy the serious housing shortage which exists in this country at the present time. When, however, we are going to provide the means therefor, we also want to see that this will be done in such a manner that the whole scheme will be based on a sound foundation. If the measure which has now been put before us were a Bill in the ordinary sense of the word, one could still try to effect improvements during the course of the Bill’s progress through the various stages. The hon. Minister himself knows from experience that a Bill which is introduced into this House by a Minister, often looks quite different after it has been passed here than it looked when originally introduced. In such a case we could have enlisted the assistance and enthusiasm of members of Parliament representing all sections of the population for a measure such as the one now introduced by the Minister, and that assistance could have been used to improve the measure. There is the other axiom that the fullest possible use should be made of the experience of people who are daily dealing with these matters in order to get a proper insight into the problems of this country; although during the present Session more use has been made of the Select Committee system than in the past, I want to point out that a measure of this kind could especially be improved by sending it to a Select Committee before second reading, where the representatives of all Parties and sections could discuss the Bill in a calm atmosphere and could consider its pros and cons; such a committee would be able to eliminate many of the things which will give rise to discussion and conflict in this House. This being the position we could not have anticipated that the Minister would come along with this measure at this stage of the Session, seeing that we are nearing the end. We would have expected it much earlier. We could not have expected him to put a measure of this nature before us at the present moment. During his speech the Minister apologised to the House for the way in which the Bill was introduced. My impression of his speech was that it consisted largely of apologetic remarks for introducing this particular measure instead of a proper Housing Bill. His principal excuse in this connection was that he had not had the time to draft a proper Housing Bill. I specially want to emphasise once more that particularly in regard to a measure such as this, which affects the whole country and in which every constituency is interested because a state of emergency exists among our population as far as housing is concerned, because everybody who has not a roof over his head is in a precarious position today, it was most essential that the Minister should have made the fullest possible use of all the opportunities which this House can afford for obtaining the advice and co-operation of at least all the members of Parliament. May I say this to the Minister? He stated here that a state of emergency exists in the country and then he said that he did not have the time to draft a proper Bill in view of the state of emergency which exists. Surely this state of emergency did not arise overnight, we did not suddenly wake up one morning to find a state of emergency. This is a state of emergency which has increased in severity from year to year since the beginning of the war, and nobody was better informed about it than the Government itself. During these war years the Government itself stated that the position in regard to housing was very serious and that it would even be more acute during the years immediately following the cessation of hostilities. It is something which every man with a bit of common sense could have realised and it therefore is all the more peculiar that the Minister tries to create the impression that this position suddenly descended on the Government and that he did not have the time to properly draft a Bill for submission to this House. That was the Minister’s excuse. If a man wants to build a house there are certain things he has to do first. The Minister mentioned several of these things. He said that if a man wants to build a house, he must have money, he must have the material and he must have the labour available. Now the Minister comes here and asks for these extraordinary and excessive powers under this Bill in order to make provision for all these things. When a man wants to build a house there is, however, one absolutely vital matter he must attend to first; he has to have a building plan. If a builder simply starts building and wants to draw up the plan while he is building, he is a very poor builder indeed. The same principle can be applied to a national housing programme. If the Minister wants to establish a national housing programme, he must first draw up a plan. It is essential that, before a new building programme is tackled and before the powers are demanded to execute such a building programme, there should be a building plan for such a programme so that we may know what plan is to be executed. The hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) quite rightly said that the Minister asked for these extraordinary and excessive powers because he does not know himself what his plans are. He is still without a plan; he has no detailed scheme; he has no properly defined plan which can give him an idea of the shape of things once he has finished with the programme, and for that reason he takes these excessive powers in order to make provision for all possible contingencies which may crop up. This measure is in the form of what the Minister calls “emergency regulations”. The state of emergency exists. My contention is that there has been ample time to draw up a proper national building programme, so that a plan might have been submitted to this House, on the basis of which we might have been able to proceed. We expected that from the Minister, and not only we, but also members on the other side were waiting for the announcement of the scheme of the national building programme by the Government, but even in this Bill we have not yet got that building programme. All that is asked for in this Bill is that the Minister should be given powers to carry out things which he afterwards may approve or disapprove of. In talking about the Bill now before us, I must say that I do not know whether ever in the history of this House we have had a Bill which is so excessive and which gives such extreme powers to a Minister. This is a Bill which compares very strangely with the Bills to which we are accustomed in this House. The Bill consists of 13 pages. Nine of those contain one clause, viz. Clause 2. The purpose of Clause 2 is merely to give extraordinary and excessive powers to the Minister. As I said just now this is a Bill of 13 pages, but Clause 2, which gives the Minister those extraordinary powers, does not reveal any proper plan, although it takes up nine pages of the 13 pages of the Bill. The powers which the Minister takes unto himself are more radical than any measure ever before accepted in the history of our legislation. The powers which the Minister will obtain under this Bill have hardly ever before been asked for by any Minister in our country, not even during war-time. It is a radical measure. What is more, it is an involved measure, and this House cannot but blame the Minister for having tarried with this Bill so long, with the result that it can only come before us now, right at the end of the Session. The Minister who has no plans and who, if he did not have the time to draw up a plan, should have found the time to do so, now comes to the House and simply states that we should, instead of approving a detailed plan, give him a blank cheque and that he shall do with it as he likes and with that blank cheque will carry out anything he wants. It is a very poor builder who simply tells us that we should give him a blank cheque and that we shall see afterwards what sort of a building he is going to erect, because he is going to evolve his building plan gradually as he goes along. He expects, however, the best results once the house is finished! That is what the Minister is doing and I also want to tell him that I gathered from his speech that he contended that we had been kept waiting all this time for a national building programme because we passed a law giving local authorities powers to build houses. We made a sub-economic housing scheme possible under the Housing Act; we were prepared to provide the local authorities with funds. But a state of emergency arose because the local authorities did not make provision under that Housing Act for the building of houses. They did not make use of the opportunities offered to them by the law. If it were true what the Minister said here, I would tell him that it would have been a simple matter for him to tell us in this House that the local authorities failed to carry out a housing programme under the existing law of the country; if in his opinion they failed to do so, I want to ask him why the Government did not proceed to carry out that programme under the Housing Act and why it did not introduce a proper amending Bill to that effect? In that case it should have been possible for the Government to carry out a housing scheme under the existing legislation which was put on the Statute Book for the benefit of the local authorities, and if necessary, it could have amended such legislation. Instead of doing that the Minister comes here with what he calls an emergency measure. He makes use of other powers than were available to the local authorities in order to carry out his programme. I just want to tell the Minister that it is extremely difficult to suggest improvements on something which is not before us. We simply do not have the Minister’s programme and plans before us. If he had come here with a detailed housing Bill, we could have discussed his plans and proposals and suggested improvements. Now, however, it is very difficult to do so. In the circumstances we can only do one thing and that is to peg the Minister down in regard to a few important points. The first one is that it is the duty of the State to make provision for remedying the housing scarcity from which the citizens of the country are suffering. The position in South Africa demands that steps shall be taken to make provision in regard to the existing housing scarcity, and if provision is made for that, we also want to lay down the principle that such provision should be made where there is an actual shortage of houses. In other words, there should be co-ordination between the existing housing shortage and the provision which is going to be made in terms of this Act. The Minister will have the figures and the Department will have the figures. From what he said here, however, I came to the conclusion that he is going to start expending an amount of £5,000,000 per annum and that this will be used during the current financial year. We tried to make an estimate, and I think the Minister will agree with me that approximately 4,000 houses can be built on the basis of £5,000,000 per annum taking into consideration administration and other expenditure. The position is that there is a most serious housing shortage in the country and therefore we have to ask him whether those 4,000 houses will in the first instance cause some amelioration in the pressing need for houses in this country. The people in general would rather have seen the Minister submit a detailed scheme for a certain number of years, and that thereafter he should have had legislation passed to make provision for the carrying out of such a scheme. This Bill, however, only makes provision for the next three or four years. During the first year 4,000 houses are to be built and circumstances may even prevent that. During the second year a slightly larger number will be built and during the third year perhaps still a few more. Is that the time-table of the Minister and are those his plans to make provision for coping with the state of emergency in the country? Does he think that he will be able to meet all requirements in that way? I want to emphasise again that provision should be made first where the position is most acute. That should be done in regard to the building of houses, etc. We should not leave cases standing over where the need is greatest, whilst in other cases preference is given where the need is not so extreme. From a Bill of this kind it is not quite clear to me what the intentions of the Government are in regard to the distribution of building material. I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that under this Bill the Minister will have the right of commandeering building material and to control it in such a way that no building material will be made available except through one channel. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a condition which might easily arise. In our country we have a group of small independent building contractors. Every smaller and larger town has one or more building contractors living there and working as master builders. Under normal conditions they were able to provide the building requirements of those towns. During the war period those small contractors were however, seriously hampered in their activities. They experienced a tremendous set-back during the war years because they could not obtain the necessary material. Many of those small building contractors could not continue with their full programme during the war period. Owing to a shortage of building materials they could not execute the necessary work. Now I should like to hear from the Minister what he intends doing in regard to this class of builder as far as the supply of the required building material is concerned and in view of the housing shortage existing in the country. The state of emergency in regard to dwelling houses is definitely very serious, because those people were greatly hampered in their building work during the war years. If we are going to carry out a national building programme in the country, we should not thereby crush the initiative of people who can assist in providing the required houses and we should not cut short their activities. We do not know what the intentions are and whether the Minister is going to use his powers in such a manner as to assist those people in the building of houses in this country or whether he is going to hamper them as they were hampered during the war years, so that they cannot contribute their share in providing dwelling houses for our population.

We want to assist them to build houses.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the following. He knows just as well as I do, as far as this is concerned—I shall give an example—that the farmers have often with their own labour or with the labour they could obtain elsewhere contributed in making provision for the housing of the people on their farms. That process also came to a stop during the war. The Minister will remember that at one time the State granted subsidies to these people for the erection of dwelling houses in order to make provision for their bywoners so that the latter could obtain proper housing facilities in cases where the farmers were not financially strong enough to do so unaided. That assistance fell away after some time. Many farmers, however, out of their own initiative and their own means made provision for the housing of their employees on the farms. If, however, there is to be the same control of building material as we had during the war, the farmers will not be able to build those houses and if they will not be able to procure the necessary building material because a national housing programmers being carried out, they will also not be able to contribute their share to the solution of the problem. We should like to hear from the Minister what his intentions in regard thereto are. The Minister will not resent the fact that in view of the provisions of the Bill which is now before us, a thousand and one questions loom up in our thoughts. In Clause 2 we find a large number of excessive powers to be laid in the hands of an excessive Minister. Sometimes he can be so excessive; as this is the case, obviously all kinds of questions present themselves: What is going to happen in this case; how is the Minister going to carry out this or that; here he gets a blank cheque, and can he now do just as he jolly well likes? I do not know whether those questions present themselves to us on this side of House only, but I believe that those questions also loom up in the minds of members on the other side of the House and even in the mind of the Minister himself. I do not think that anybody on the other side can imagine—or as the Minister prefers it “can visualise”—how this measure is going to work in practice. We have no idea of what the position is going to look like after the Minister has finished with it. We are very keen to carry out a buildingprogramme, but at the moment neither the Minister nor we have any conception of how it is going to turn out. I do not think the Minister has such a conception and as this is the case, the Minister must assume that we shall of course put quite a number of questions to him in the course of this debate. I have already put a few to him, but there are still more particulars of the Bill on which we have to put questions to him. I still want to ask the Minister the following. State money is to be provided here in order to remedy the housing shortage. Other measures have been taken under which preference is being given to returned soldiers as compared to those who stayed behind. Other measures have been passed in this House and no secret was made of the fact that preference would be given to returned soldiers. Those were measures under which the State granted substantial financial assistance, but preference was given to returned soldiers. Take for instance the Riet River scheme in my own constituency. A building programme was carried out there. Plots were fenced in and the houses were completed. But the general public cannot get in there. It is being reserved exclusively for returned soldiers. Seeing that this is the case and as the need for housing in our country is extremely great, not only in respect of the returned soldiers, not only in regard to those people who worked on the home front and were transferred to other places, but where today it affects every section of the people, this becomes a very serious matter and we want to know from the Minister whether he is going to give preference and if so, to whom. Is he first going to provide houses for the returned soldiers and is he thereafter going to give attention to the civilian population of the country? That would be quite wrong. From his reply to such a question it depends whether we can give our blessing to a measure of this nature or not. But we do not receive a single reply from the Minister to these questions. He only tells us that he is going to do certain things, but he himself does not yet know what he is going to carry out. I want to ask him a further question. This is a question relating to the first part of my amendment. Lately we have noticed a tendency here in the House, when members on this side get up to speak about separate residential areas, that members on the other side and even Ministers, also get up and state that they are also in favour of separateness. I remember that even the Prime Minister said so in this House to his own surprise. It is the first time he said so during his lifetime, and he is already an old man. He has been in this House for many years and during the present Session he said so for the first time. I believe he was himself surprised about it. The Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation on the other side also said so. I think that particularly he must have been surprised when he said so. I want to advise him to go and stand in front of the mirror when he gets home and repeat it. I believe it will be very interesting to him to get an impression of himself when he says a thing like that. Lately we have heard from members and Ministers on the other side that they also want it. All these years they have been opposed to it. Public opinion, however, has changed completely during the last few years. Public opinion now demands the principle of separateness, and during the last few years this demand has become so insistent, not only among the supporters of members on this side, but also among supporters of members on the other side, that they were compelled to take notice of the section of the electorate which feels strongly in this matter. We on this side have advocated the principle for many years, and they now feel that they should also say something about it. We are now witnessing the remarkable spectacle that although after all these years they are at last starting to repeat something we have been advocating all along but which they never associated themselves with, they on no occasion were prepared to incorporate such a provision in the legislation which they introduced in this House. To me this is a very serious matter. If they are also in favour of this principle, why are they not prepared to incorporate it also in our legislation? If they are in favour of that principle they should also incorporate and entrench it in our legislation so that any Government of the future would know what the position is and that this is the policy laid down by the Government, entrenched and enshrined in the laws of the land. That, however, they are not prepared to do. No, it appears as if the position they want to occupy is that of a person trying to sit on two chairs. They will now be able to tell the one section of their supporters that they are also in favour of separteness, but on the other hand they will be able to whisper into the ears of the other section: No, in actual fact we are not in favour of it, for we have not incorporated it in our legislation. The day will come, however, when just as they have now been forced into the position that they have to declare in this House that they are in favour of separateness, they will also be forced into the position that they will have to be prepared to entrench it in our legislation, so that once and for all we shall have a clear and distinct national policy. In order to give them an opportunity to show their mettle, and to bring proof that they actually want it, we have moved this amendment, and we shall move it again in future. Furthermore there is a very important matter which is embodied in the second part of my amendment. The housing scarcity in our country is very serious …. I do not know whether the hon. memebr for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie) is at the moment busy preparing his speech with the assistance of the Minister.

Carry on, Serfie.

I cannot carry on if I have to carry that hon. member as well. I still want to ask the Minister the following question. It is a generally admitted fact today that the housing position in our country is very serious. The position is extremely serious, but we should also take into consideration the factors which have contributed to the creation of this housing shortage. In devising a scheme for the solution of the housing problem and for the provision of houses for people who cannot find accommodation, we should take in consideration the factors which caused that position, and the Minister will agree with me that during this war South Africa became a haven of refuge for people from other countries, for refugees and foreigners, on a scale never experienced in the past. They came here and they filled the accommodation that was still available. Many of them went to live in boarding houses, and they took up all kinds of accommodation. We are therefore faced with a serious position which has been brought about by people who were able to compete with our own people. Foreigners and refugees from other countries who were able to pay more and better than our own people, took up the accommodation. Our people got out and they got in. This is a very important factor and now I should like to hear from the Minister what his attitude is in regard thereto. If the Minister should carry out his scheme, if he should build his national houses—it is not actually a scheme, but still he is making provision for something of the sort—if the Government proposes making that provision, it is essential that we should ask whether, when provision is made by the State with the money of the taxpayer, provision will also be made for those who are residing here temporarily. We should like to know what the position is going to be of those people, whether they will leave again or whether they are going to stay here; people who today are taking up the housing of the citizens of the Union. I should like to hear from the Minister whether he is prepared to accept the princple, as outlined in this amendment, namely that when he comes to this Parliament and asks for money in order to provide a remedy against the housing scarcity in our country, he will in the first instance make that provision in respect of our own people. This is a very serious matter as far as we are concerned. Any Government in South Africa which is worth its salt and which possesses any sense of responsibility, will in taking steps of this nature attend in the first instance to the requirements of our own people, and I should like to hear from the Minister what the position is going to be. Is he going to allow these foreigners to stay here and allow others to come in to compete against our own citizens for those houses which are to be built with State money to alleviate the housing shortage? This is a frank and serious question to which we should like to receive an answer. I think the Minister should give his earnest attention to the matter and we expect an unequivocal reply from him as far as this question is concerned. I furthermore want to mention another factor, which in my opinion is a factor which could have been controlled by the Government and which has also contributed to the creation of the State of emergency in regard to housing. I just want to tell the Minister once more that when provision is made by the State in regard to the housing problem, provision should be made for the people who are really in need and who are in need as a result of the condition in which they find themselves, but not for those who are moving about arbitrarily. There are cases where people have created a state of emergency through their own actions and who, when they are allowed to create such a state of emergency, come along and ask that provision be made for them. In regard to this matter I want to be quite frank. During another debate I quoted some figures and I shall do so again. I want to say something about the migration of natives from the rural areas to the urban areas. In the Cape Peninsula the position has become such that quite recently a deputation representing the Cape Town Municipality, the Divisional Council and other public bodies interviewed the Minister of Native Affairs. They raised strong objections against the influx of natives to the urban areas, and the figures I am now going to quote are the figures which were submitted to the Minister of Native Affairs by the deputation, namely that under normal circumstances provision can only be made for employment for 26,000 natives. At the time when the deputation saw the Minister, however, the influx had already assumed a total of 80,000 natives. Those are not my figures, but the figures submitted by the deputation to the Minister of Native Affairs. As this is the case, it is obvious that you are here faced with the problem of a large number of people coming in, who by their influx have created a state of emergency. I want to say quite definitely that we shall certainly raise objection against the money to be spent under this legislation, being used for making provision for reception depôts for the natives coming here and who are not required as labourers. The Prime Minister stated and the Minister of Native Affairs admitted it, that a state of emergency has arisen in this connection and that the position is very serious; the Minister of Native Affairs, however, at his wits’ end, said: “I know that the position is serious, but how can I control it?” The Government failed to exercise a proper control. The excuse of the Minister of Native Affairs was that they could not exercise control in the Cape because there is no pass system in the Cape and because the pass laws do not apply to the Cape Province. The pass laws are applicable, however, in the Transvaal, but on the Reef and in Pretoria you have the same position. Why is that not being controlled? There they have the powers, but the Minister throws up his hands in despair and says that we can do nothing but to let the matter run its course and that we cannot stop it. The urban areas now have to become the bottleneck in which the surplus labour has to be canalised and depôts have to be built to receive them. We seriously object, because the Government failed to prevent the influx of excess labour. We do not want the money which will be available for these schemes to be used for making provision for those superfluous natives because the Government failed to exercise control. Our point of view is that when work can be found for those people you still cannot allow them to start a mass migration on their own without any control and to come here and create a very serious problem, and thereafter to expect that the taxpayers, that is the European taxpayers, for they themselves do not pay a single sixpence towards it, will make provision to remedy their housing position. It is necessary, it has been necessary for a long time and it will still be necessary, especially in view of the building projects of the Government, to put a stop to the superfluous influx of natives and to take care that, when the building programmes are carried out—if they are carried out—provision will be made only for those who are really in need, and not for people who, like the natives, have created the problem themselves. Provision should be made for the citizens of the country, especially for the workers who have been housed in very bad conditions. I do hope that the plans will be carried to fruition—and the Government will have to carry out the plans for the pressure of the public will demand from any government in South Africa that the plans be carried out—and I hope that the plans will be carried out efficiently. Every citizen of this country should have the opportunity of living under his own roof. If you want to build up a nation you can only build it up from the various units which make up the cells of your national structure, that is to say the separate families of the people. If you want to promote a healthy home life, you have to promote it under a proper roof. I hope that the time will come when that ideal will become reality, that the time will come when every citizen of the country shall have his own roof above his head, so that a sound national structure may arise, constructed from healthy cells. I now move my amendment.

I have great pleasure in seconding the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein). The words of warning expressed by this side of the House and even from members of the other side of the House to the Minister in respect of the housing question in South Africa, have today become real. This housing question has indeed been acute during the past years. The crisis has existed at least for the past two years and it is not that the question has only recently developed into a crisis as the Minister would have us believe. Every member in this House knows how pressure has from time to time been exercised on the Minister during the past few years to make provision for the necessity of housing for the people. But every time he was attacked on the matter he simply rose and brought the people outside under the impression that the Government has the matter in hand, and is taking steps for meeting the position. I would like to quote to the Minister his own words of a year back. What did he say on the 28th April of last year? He stated—

Then he goes further. He pushes out his chest and states—

Twelve months ago the Minister spoke as seriously as that. Now he comes along today and collapses and declares openly: “I admit we are now faced with a national emergency.” He now acknowledges, as we expected would happen, that there is an emergency. After all the pressure exercised by us on the Minister he is unable even to point to one thing that he has done. But when the Minister saw that the people outside were becoming perturbed and that he was no longer able to quiet them with pretty words, he suddenly started holding public meetings. And what did he try to do there? He tried to evade his responsibility, and on the public platform he tore the municipalities to shreds and pieces. I do not say that municipalities have complied with their commitments, but the hon. Minister knows that there were matters, difficulties in the way which prevented the municipalities from making a success of any plans which they may have had. The Minister knows that municipalities did not have sufficient facilities, in many cases, to proceed with the schemes. The municipalities do not have the powers and facilities which the Minister now intends providing for them. When municipalities started hitting back, the Minister had to find another scapegoat. He had promised so much that he had to find a way out. Then he stated that it was not his fault. He discovered another scapegoat and he placed all the blame upon Dr. Hamlin and stated that he had misled him, the Minister, and the people. It is no argument for a responsible Minister to use in a responsible debate such as this. Did the Minister not keep his eye on that? I want to put a question to the Minister. I may be wrong, but I learned outside, that Dr. Hamlin almost had no staff, that he did not even have a typist at one time. Is that true? But whatever the position may be the Minister cannot so easily divest himself of his responsibility. When the war started and when the Minister spoke about a new South Africa, he did not say that the municipalities had to make provision for housing, he did not then say that Dr. Hamlin was the man, but he stated that the Government would provide housing. Now we see where we have been landed. He now comes and what does he ask? He told us at the commencement of the Session that he intended introducing legislation shortly. After we had drawn attention to the position he stated that he intended introducing legislation. Where is the Bill? We did not get it. At the end of the Session he comes along and puts us before a fait accompli. By means of a large number of regulations he wants to obtain power over different matters. I want to enumerate a few. In the first place he asks the House to give him a blank cheque. I want to say to the Minister that as far as I personally am concerned, if I bear in mind his conduct in the past in connection with the housing question, that I am not prepared to give him a blank cheque.

We shall give it to him.

I will not entrust a blank cheque to him. He asks for dictatorial power to exercise control over all building materials. He wants full control over the expropriation of land, Crown land as well as private land. He comes along with a bit of Conroy legislation and he also wants power to chase people off the land. He rises and he states that it is a first requirement that he should have power to expropriate land. Pay is a secondary matter. That may be made after expropriation has taken place. Then only could the matter be discussed. We realise that there is a state of emergency but my difficulty and objection is, that the state of emergency was not prevented by the Minister. If he had taken action as he has from time to time promised to do, then the state of emergency could have been obviated partly, if not wholly. The Minister comes along in fact and asks for full power over municipalities. I now want to ask him his real intention in connection with rates. I find the following clause in the Bill—

To me it is incomprehensible that the Minister wants to say to municipalities by way of regulation, what rates they should levy on properties and whether rates may be levied in respect of properties. The Minister may even provide that they shall vary. What is going to be the position of a city council? My one objection is that the more houses are constructed in a city the more electricity is used and the more water, for example, with the result that if hundreds of buildings are erected and they are perhaps exempted from rates as the Minister may provide, as I have seen in the Press that he also contemplates doing. Only one alternative remains and that is that a city council will be compelled to levy an extra charge upon present consumers. Then we come to the position that the man who has had his property there for years, and who perhaps has a small income, will have to pay for electricity and water for persons who will be occupying the houses which the Minister now intends erecting. It is an unheard of matter and I trust that the Minister does not intend applying such a regulation. I can give the Minister an assurance, as has been done by one of the hon. members here, that if he were to do that he would be putting his head into a hornets’ nest as far as the municipalities and the inhabitants of the different urban areas are concerned. The. Minister goes even further. I do not know what is happening but it appears to me that he also wants to obtain control over the Minister of Labour.

Perhaps it will be a good thing.

Yes, perhaps. It seems to me that the Minister is preparing himself to move the portfolio to his side because he sees that labour is going to break away. I want to ask the Minister to state clearly whether he intends doing it. By way of regulation he even wants to determine the training of artisans. How is he going to do that? We want to know. He should explain it. What about wage determinations? He is taking the work away from the apprenticeship committees. He appropriates all powers to himself and we must know how the Minister intends arranging such matters. It is most necessary. But the Minister wants even greater powers. He comes along and says: “These regulations may conflict with any law in force in South Africa”. Owing to negligence in not taking timely action, notwithstanding our warnings, and the warnings of his own supporters as regards the state of emergency, we now find ourselves in the position that the Minister has in fact to ask for full authority for governing South Africa. For that reason I say, were it not for the imperative necessity outside, we on this side, would not have given unlimited powers to the Minister. Why should the Minister govern by means of a number of regulations? Why can he not approach us with a properly drafted Bill, a Bill divided into different parts as a good Bill should be? In such a Bill the Minister could for example fix the constitution of the board or boards, the duties of such boards. Tn the Bill it could be stated how far he wants to go in respect of the expropriation of land. He could state to what extent he is going to restrict building materials. As far as the other clauses are concerned, which we find in this. Bill, is the Minister in a position to state to what extent he intends compelling other building contractors to co-operate in the erection of houses for the Government. I am concerned about the position. The Minister is here asking for powers for himself which will make it possible for him to bring private building operations to a standstill, if he so desires. That is his power. That is left to him in this Bill. I think the Minister is obliged to inform us to what extent he intends taking action in the matter. We desired a Bill in which the Minister would prescribe and define the training of the workers required. We want to see how far he goes. That is the important point. We desired a Bill containing provisions regarding the powers which will be granted to local authorities. That is also an important point. I now come to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein). I want to make a few remarks in connection with houses for natives. I do not want to say that we must not build houses for natives. That will not be my plea. There are parts, as I have stated previously, where the housing position of natives is desperate and it should be improved. I have in mind a place such as Alexandra in Johannesburg. We have criticised the Minister in connection with the conditions prevailing there. There was an outbreak of smallpox in that area. It adjoins the European area and the position was so serious that there were 14 cases of death and 30 cases were taken to hospital. Where a reserve is near a city it is in the interests of the Europeans to have a good reserve there and to see that it is kept as clean as possible. But that does not remove the duty of providing for Europeans. When reference is made to priority No. 1 and priority No. 2 in connection with the building of houses, then we do not say that the Minister should not proceed with the construction of houses for natives but we point out that there are thousands of Europeans who live in hovels and then we say that houses for Europeans should be priority No. 1. We appreciate the position of the natives, but on the other hand we appreciate fully that every penny with which houses will have to be erected comes out of the pockets of the Europeans and not out of the pockets of natives.

Still the old story.

Yes, the old story. I desire to state here that where the financial responsibility has to be borne by Europeans preference must be given to houses for Europeans in each case and should be priority No. 1. That is all I ask of the Minister. Continue with the erection of houses for natives but first make provision for Europeans. The housing need is great, especially in the cities, and the Minister is aware of it. And when we refer to the erection of houses for Europeans then I join with the hon. member for Boshof in asking for whom such houses will be erected. Is the Minister in a position to give an assurance that where the housing need exists, he will take steps to ensure that no single house is erected except for Union nationals? That surely is an assurance that must be given us and there I fully agree with the hon. member for Boshof, and I hope that the Minister will at all events accept that portion of our amendment. Then I revert to the erection of houses for natives. That is contained in the other portion of this amendment. As I have stated the City Council of Johannesburg has already unanimously adopted a resolution, or with one dissentient, for separation, complete separation of European and non-European. But the Minister cannot today say that the municipality should not carry it out. I want to point out that in most areas municipalities have not the right and power to put it into execution. For example, there is the Gold Law of 1907 which has to be taken into account, and account has to be taken of the Natives Urban Areas Act which has been consolidated and account must be taken of the Slums Act and all the other laws. Therefore the passing of special legislation, seems to me to be necessary in order to grant city councils powers to carry out such a scheme. I refer to that incidentally. As regards native suburbs, after adopting the resolution, the city council has to date purchased large areas of land for the housing of natives, Asiatics and coloured persons separately. I now merely want to ask the Minister in goodness name not to have a single native house erected in the western area of Johannesburg. In principle, separation has been accepted by the City Council of Johannesburg.

Were the natives there first?

I want to ask the Minister to have absolute separation in mind. It is in the interests of natives and of Europeans. It is in the interests of coloured persons and Asiatics.

What is the test for separation? How far must they be apart?

How far?

You are referring to Johannesburg West. How far must they go?

Originally it was the idea that the city council should clear the area there gradually and would provide decent dwellings for natives near Orlando or where they have at present purchased. It is the purpose to get natives separate. We want to make it more convenient for natives.

The natives were there first.

At present the natives are faced with great difficulties in respect of housing. We desire to improve the position and we would then be able to contract a railway for the natives, a side-line, and make provision for fast and convenient transport.

They will not believe you. They will believe that you will go there again as soon as they are there.

The city council has adopted the resolution in favour of separation. We have had race conflicts in the Western area. I think it was the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) who stated that the natives were there first. I admit that. That is actually the position but sight should not be lost of the quick development along the Witwatersrand which implied entry by Europeans.

That is no excuse.

The European population has extended up to the locations and that is the position at present. The hon. member is right in saying that the natives were there first but as the position is, as it is, we cannot close our eyes further to the facts. We shall have racial conflicts on the Rand until such time as separation has been carried through. That is why I appeal to the Minister te meet us in this respect. The hon. member for Boshof now asks that the principle of separation should be incorporated and defined in this Bill. I know what the Minister’s reply will be. I do not think that he will accept it because it has become the practice lately, that if we on this side refer to separation, a Minister opposite rises and states that they are also in favour of it and then they add that it is not necessary to incorporate it in legislation because the building will not be mixed. It is our difficulty on this side that the Government keeps on creating the impression that they are in favour of separation while they are not. We have made numbers of proposals on this side and also expressed ourselves in favour of separation on other occasions when the Minister agreed with us. But when we come to the test, when we have to vote for the incorporation in legislation they vote it down. A colossal amount is being asked for in this Bill. We do not know what the Minister is going to ask for in the end and that is why we feel that it is necessary to incorporate this amendment in the Bill. I want the Minister to follow me clearly. I am criticising but I am not opposed to the principle of the erection of houses. That must go through. I support that. We must build houses for the people in the country, for Europeans as well as for non-Europeans. But with this proviso however that preference should be given in respect of Europeans. That is the principle from which we set out. I regret the Minister approaching us with a Bill which does not enable us to know what his plans are. The Minister must bear in mind that we leave here and that we go to our constituents. They will put questions to us about this Bill and in regard to the housing plans of the Minister. We will then have to inform them that we do not know whether the cost will be £5,000,000 or £50,000,000, but that we have granted that to the Minister. We are not opposed to granting the funds for the erection of houses. We are today compelled by necessity to give the Minister a blank cheque. We have no choice. We are compelled to give it to him because there is a state of emergency which has to be met.

I was wondering why the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) had moved the amendment to introduce the application of the principle of racial separation into this particular Bill, because as he well knows, that is laid down in the case of the African in the Urban Areas Act and adhered to by the municipalities in relation to other races in then building programmes; they always provide separate townships, and that has always been the case. But the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. Mentz) has made clear what exactly “separation” means in the view of his Party. It means first of all discrimination in fulfilling the housing needs of the various races. We know that in relation to the immediate needs there is a shortage of 120,000 houses for non-Europeans as against 30,000 for Europeans. Those figures alone tell whose need is the most desperate.

What percentage is it?

I am not asking for any priorities. We are asking that the needs of the population should be met in this matter “pari passu”, and according to the principles of justice. According to the member for Westdene separation means first of all discrimination, and it would also appear that it means, from the latter portion of his speech, the pushing out of non-Europeans and natives from localities where at present they have a roof over their heads. For goodness sake let use build houses for those who have not got them over their heads before we talk in these terms.

I only asked that they should not build these houses there now. I did not ask that the houses should be removed.

I am glad to hear that, and I hope that that interjection will go on record.

I said not now. I said the council has decided on that.

Then there is again the practical application of the principle of separation as seen by those hon. members. You have the western townships which were originally well away from the places where Europeans live, but the Europeans themselves have deliberately gone to live there, and they now demand the removal of these people. The same consideration applies to the example given by the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren). He mentioned Kalk Bay, which I have known for many years, and he said that the local authority put up sub-economic flats for the coloured people there right in the middle of the European area. The facts of the matter are these. I can remember a time when Kalk Bay was a coloured fishing village. There were hardly any European houses there except on the high level road and a few near the harbour. Apart from that Kalk Bay was mostly inhabited by Malay fishermen. They have gradually been got out of there, and the site of the sub-economic flats the hon. member referred to is all that remains of an area which was originally entirely non-European. The removal of that block is what he calls the application of the principle of separation. No one has objected to people of different races having proper provision made for each race, but what we do object to—and I hope the Minister will take note of this—is the use of the word “separation” as a cover for the application of the principle of discrimination and extrusion. This Bill is to my mind incomparably the most important Bill introduced this Session. Its importance derives from the desperate character of the need which it seeks to meet. The vast majority of the population of this country are deficient in all the necessities of life. They are malnourished to the point of starvation. There are famine conditions prevailing in some parts of the country. The clothing position of the people in this country is miserable. Raggedness is widespread. But probably in no respect are basic needs so inadequate at present as that of shelter against the elements. In analysing the character of the need the Minister has divided it into the short-term and long-term aspects. That is in my opinion a sound distinction. We have communities who are actually living in our big urban centres who are overcrowded to an inconceivable degree in the slums of our great cities, like District Six, or are living in miserable hovels and shacks in the peri-urban areas. These are communities which have been drawn by the operation of natural economic forces to the great urban areas in response to the employment demand. I hear hon. members of the Opposition demanding that in the Cape provision should not be made for the communities of Africans who are now being forced to live in these hovels on the Cape Flats, on the ground, they say, that they have come here without there being employment available. I cannot emphasise this often enough, that the native population in Cape Town has been deliberately brought here in large numbers in 1941 and 1942. I have been in close touch with the labour position here and can assure the Minister that that is the position.

Who brought them here?

They were brought in response to the demand for their labour, more particularly in connection with the fortification works. I do not say they were recruited in the territories. I do not want the hon. member to understand that. The demand for labour was set up here. It could not be met locally and as soon as the news spread about they came here.

That is quite different from saying they were brought here deliberately. They were not brought here.

They were brought here through the operation of economic forces. That has always been so to some extent. The only solution of this problem is for the provision of accommodation for a sufficient unskilled labour force to meet local requirements. It has been the experience of this country that whenever you have sufficient accommodation for a nonEuropean labour force you do not get an influx. As long as any great urban area depends for the fulfilment of its labour requirements upon migratory labour from hundreds of miles away, there must be an influx, and the only question is one of degree from time to time. I think people like the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) can rest assured that there is no danger either of the City Council of Cape Town or of the Housing Commission building more houses for the Africans in the Cape than is necessary, because for years accommodation has lagged far behind what is necessary to house the labour force. That is a fact upon which I challenge contradiction by any hon. member, and if the hon. member for Stellenbosch or the hon. member for Boshof have a better knowledge than I have of how the City Council regard this matter, they will agree with me that there is no danger of their building too many houses. But the matter was not approached from that point of view. It is obviously another case of prejudice without having taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the facts of the case. From the short-term point of view there is an enormous task both here in the Peninsula and elsewhere, in all the large urban centres, and in many of the areas of the small local authorities, for the provision of housing for the non-European working classes. From the long-term point of view also the Minister will, I hope, recognise that it is inevitable that there shall be some shifting of the population. The Government’s economic advisers, notably the Van Eck Commission, have pointed out that at present there is a maladjustment of population, particularly the native population, as between town and country, between industry and agriculture. But a higher national income per head of population demands that there shall be a still further movement of rural natives to the urban areas. That is an economic argument and I have never heard it authoritatively questioned. That sets up a still greater need for the housing of non-Europeans on a long-term basis. I now want to ask the Minister a question which I hope he will reply to. On what basis was the distinction made between the houses immediately required and those which will be required in the next ten years? According to Dr. Hamlin, I think it was 150,000 houses are immediately required and the balance, up to 440,000, will he required in the next ten years. In estimating that balance over and above the 150,000, was the necessity of the movement of population as well as the increase of population, taken into account? I think it was, otherwise the increase would be too large. The dimensions of the task which confronts the Government and which this Bill is designed to meet can be guaged from the mere mention of these figures. The resolution with which it will have to be tackled can also be gauged from the previous record of the construction of sub-economic houses in this country. Now, I do not know how many of these 440,000 houses are to be sub-economic, or national, houses, but 60 per cent. of them are for non-Europeans, and I take it that that 60 per cent. at all events will be sub-economic, and I have no doubt that a large number of national houses will be required for the European population also. Now the Minister said in Another Place what in effect came to this, that in a record of 15 years of building sub-economic houses only 24,000 houses were built by the local authorities, or 1,600 per annum, and if we are going to have anything like that rate in future, building at that rate, it would take 275 years to complete the programme of 440,000 houses. I am sure however that we will not build at that rate, and that, I presume, is the reason why this Bill has been introduced, but it means a very considerable speeding up from the past record of 1,600 per annum if the shortage is to be made up.

1,600 is the average.

Yes and I want to comment on that because it bears out the accuracy of the complaint made by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) earlier this afternoon as to the apathy of local authorities. 1,600 was the average but, that was speeded up during the war years.

There were as many houses built during the war years as in the previous nine years of peace.

Well that is a most damning indictment of the local authorities. What excuse was there for the local authorities to build at such a tortoise rate in the years before the war? And it is this accumulated shortage which causes this serious situation today.

You must except Port Elizabeth.

Yes, it has to a large extent done its duty but it is a very rare exception in this regard. Apart from the past prospects, the immediate future prospects are not too bright either. In 1944 the Minister got a promise from the local authorities that they would build if he made material available, 12,000 houses in a year, but towards the end of the year, they said that they could only build 2,000 houses—not much better than the previous average rate of 1,600. What we have to do, according to Dr. Hamlin is to build 440,000 in ten years. That is a colossal job and in my opinion it calls for the concession to the Government of the most drastic powers, and these powers are being asked for in this Bill and I think properly asked for. I welcome this Bill warmly. At an earlier stage in the Session I asked the Government to introduce legislation which would inter alia provide for the control of supply of building materials and increased powers for the expropriation of land, for the keeping down of land values and the acquisition of land at non-speculative values for housing purposes, and for the training of an additional labour force. All these are provided for in this Bill. I can therefore only express the hope that these powers will be used to the full. The Minister mentioned the apathy of local authorities. The figures I have quoted show just what that apathy can be. I have no doubt that the Minister has had great trouble with vested interests. He would not ask for these powers if they were not a menace. They have not found voices here during this debate, I am glad to say, but I have no doubt that they will start once the Bill is through. The most important portion of the Bill is the clause dealing with labour. I think I am right in saying that the reason why the local authorities could not get any where near the estimate of 12,000 houses was due to the drastic shortage of labour, and there is overwhelming evidence as to the shortage of the skilled labour force in the building industry in this country. The shortage has been put at 60 per cent. Dr. Hamlin, the ex-Director of Housing, in a public speech the other day made to a Parktown Women’s Association, estimated that there was a need for 80,000 skilled workers in the building industry if the Government’s programme is to be attained. Actually there are only 26,000 available including those in the army still, and 80,000 are required. It is for this reason that I particularly welcome the provision for emergency training and for the implied guarantee—I am going to ask in a moment that it shall be actually guaranteed as far as possible—that large numbers of nonEuropeans, natives, coloureds and Indians will be trained for building work, more particularly for employment in the construction of houses for members of their own race. And it is this housing which forms the vast majority of the houses required. I do however want to comment here on the significance of this shortage of skilled labour in the building industry and the circumstances that have led the Minister to ask for emergency powers to train native and coloured labour. We, the native representatives, have always contended that if any necessity of life for the people of this country were surveyed from the point of view of need, it would be found that the production would be drastically below what was needed and that the skilled labour force to speed up that production would be desperately short. We have always said that you cannot just disqualify four-fifths of the population from acquiring skill, which is the basis of all wealth, without most deleterious effects upon the economy as a whole. That has always been our case against the industrial colour bar, and this 60 per cent. shortage of artisans is the most devastating indictment of the industrial colour bar that I have ever seen. And I am quite sure it would be the same for every other necessity if it were surveyed, as well as housing. If a survey were made of production of food and clothing I feel certain that a drastic shortage of skilled labour would disclose itself there also. I was all the more sorry, therefore, to hear the hon. member for Stellenbosch, whose absence from the Chamber at this moment I regret, criticise this training scheme of the Minister’s on the ground that non-European trainees, particularly Africans, might compete with artisans of other races of the community. To put it in another way, what the hon. member said was this: In a situation where you have 26,000 artisans and need 80,000 you should cut out the 75 per cent. of the population from acquiring the necessary training and skill. In this connection I want to quote Dr. Hamlin again. In the same speech to which I referred a moment ago he is reported in the “Cape Times” of 5th May as having said—

I assume that the hon. member for Stellenbosch knew that that responsible estimate had been made and that when he spoke he had full knowledge of the facts. To say what he did is tantamount to saying that it is better for us to continue with this acute housing shortage than to make use of Africans. I want to ask the Minister a question in connection with the training scheme. He gave the terms of the wages and the length of the training of nonEuropeans under the scheme. I should be glad if the Minister could confirm in his reply that when he mentioned non-Europeans, he mentioned it in the wide sense to cover all non-Europeans—coloureds, Asiatics and Africans—that he was not using the term in the restrictive sense of coloured people only. I think the provisions for guaranteeing full employment for artisans in the building industry, in view of the provisions for dilution, are fully justified. I myself asked for that at an earlier stage in the Session, and I asked the Minister also to see to this: He is taking power in this Bill to limit profits and I take it that no contractor or employer will be allowed to make additional profit by reason of the fact that he is using diluted labour. Now I want to say something in relation to the scale of rent, and in this connection I want to support the suggestion which the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Sullivan) put forward this afternoon as to the rate of interest. At the present time even where houses are built a scale of rents is charged which the lower income groups, more particularly the native workers in the towns, simply cannot pay. The city council of Cape Town has a scheme which it has already started to enlarge its township at Langa. For these new houses it wants to charge a rent of 35s. for a two-roomed house, 37s. 6d. for a three-roomed house and £2 a month for a four-roomed house.

What do the houses cost?

The houses cost, including the land, about £780. The land represents about £110 of that. The hon. member knows that those are fantastic costs, and as a matter of fact, they are also fantastic rents. Anyone who knows the scale of wages for unskilled workers here, anyone who realises that the ordinary African worker is not employed all the time must know that few of these people can afford to pay these rents. A lot of this labour is casual labour in the building industry and on the docks. The man’s income is not even equal to the nominal rate of wages he draws. The Smit Committee estimated that the ordinary African worker in the town could not pay rent on more than £250 to £300, and here we have local authorities coming along and proposing schemes for building houses at a cost of £600 and £700.

Ridiculous.

The Minister says it is ridiculous but I can assure him that it is a fact.

I meant the cost.

Those costs have got to be brought down and whether the hon. Minister does it by means of the method suggested by the hon. member for Durban (Berea) or by some other means, it has to be done. The house rent should be within the means of the people for whom the houses are built. In this connection I want to ask the Minister another question as to whether he is not prepared to use the powers that this Parliament gave him last year, and apply the principle of differential rents in these townships for the poorer people, whether Europeans, coloured or African. I have heard various criticisms of differential rents, that there may be difficulties and inequalities in practice, but I can assure the hon. Minister that in most native townships the general level of poverty is so flat, the general means of the population is more or less the same, with few exceptions, that there ought to be no great difficulty in applying the principle of differential renting and laying down that a man should not be charged a higher rent than a certain percentage of his ordinary income. I want to repeat that I welcome this Bill. So far as this House can help the Government, it will come to its assistance in passing this Bill, and I hope that the Minister in administering it will do so in the spirit in which he referred to the Bill in his introductory speech. We have a national emergency, and I would suggest to the Minister that he should take no notice of the speeches made here saying that he must give priority to one section of the nation as against another. The need is a uniform need and should be met in a uniform way.

I welcome this Bill and I am sure the majority of the members in this House welcome the Bill. In the short time at my disposal I would like to give the House an outline of what East London is doing in connection with the housing problem. Before dealing with that, I want to ask whether the body which the Minister proposes to set up is going to have full power to see the scheme through or, like the Housing Commission set up by the Minister, call conferences as the Housing Commission has done with no result. East London is trying to do its utmost to keep the undertaking which it gave to erect a certain number of houses for ex-volunteers. The experience of East London has been that in spite of their endeavours they have been given no assistance by the Housing Commission and for that reason they have taken the matter into their own hands with the result that at present in one of the best suburbs they have erected no less than 25 houses, all of different designs, so that no two will look alike. If they are all alike they may perhaps in the near future not develop into slums but into undesirable places of residence, and therefore they are all of different designs and as attractive as possible. This is one of East London’s contributions to the men who have fought for us. On the question of ground, I think the municipality deserves praise for the manner in which they have come forward as far as ground is concerned. The plots which were made available were valued at anything up to £500 but in order to meet the need of these people, with the consent of the Provincial Administration, the plots have been made available at £1 per plot. This will go a long way in alleviating the position. In spite of that low price, at today’s prices the house will cost £1,600 to £1,700. Under the town sub-economic scheme for ex-volunteers owing to the high cost of material and labour a three-roomed house will cost approximately £1,000. Then I would like to draw the attention of the House to this economic housing scheme. I have an extensive memorandum here which I am not going to quote altogether, but I would like to quote two or three items from it which I am sure will be of considerable interest. The memorandum is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the benefits for ex-servicemen and women including those still on active service and prisoners-of-war, and the second part deals with applications for loans under the Government Housing Act No. 35 of 1920 as amended. I am not going to refer to the second portion, but I am going to refer briefly to the first part which is of wide interest to anyone concerned. There are two areas set aside for the building of these houses, number 1, which is one of the best areas in the city, comprising 85 residential erven and the second comprising 147 residential erven available in connection with this scheme. Both the townships are ideally situated in good localities and all amenities will be provided. First of all the council proposes to deal with these two townships as follows—and I want to read this in order not to make any errors—there are three conditions stipulated here—

1. (a) On a certain number of erven dwelling houses containing four and three living rooms respectively, together with kitchen, bathroom, lavatories, and servant’s room will be erected and sold on easy terms to approved applicants.
2. (b) A certain number of erven will be sold to approved applicants for the erection thereon of dwelling houses to their own design and at their own expense.
3. (c) A certain number of erven will be sold to approved applicants for the erection thereon of dwelling houses to their own design and at their own expense with assistance of loans made available by the Government through the council under the provisions of the Government Housing Act No. 35 of 1920 as amended.

Then there are certain conditions of which the applicant must satisfy the council, one being that neither the husband nor the wife is the owner of a dwelling house situate in the municipality of East London, suitable for occupation by himself or his family, and the condition of title will be that the owner by himself, or by his family, must personally occupy the property, etc. I do not want to read out all the conditions. But the latter portion of this is very important and I am informed that the council has available a number of plans and designs of houses containing four and three living rooms respectively, and an applicant may select anyone of those plans and request the council to erect the house according to such plan at the agreed price. The memorandum goes on to say—

Again it goes on to say—

That is for a period of 30 years. Then the memorandum goes on to describe what rents are anticipated from those houses, and the suggestion is that on an erf costing £1, the approximate cost of a four-roomed house, fenced, etc., will be £1,737 and that the monthly payment in redemption of capital and interest will be about £7 12s. 6d. per month, plus rates and taxes amounting to about £2 7s. 6d. per month, giving a total of £10 per month exclusive of electric light and water charges. In the case of a three-roomed house costing £1,642, the monthly payment will be about £7 4s. 2d. plus rates and taxes amounting to about £2 5s. 9d., making a total of £9 10s. 0d. exclusive of electric light and water charges. Those are the propostions of the East London Council and they are going on with it. The council hopes to erect and have ready for occupation by the end of the year no less than 100 of these houses. It will be seen that the Town Council of East London is doing its best to meet this housing emergency.

I do not think there are any members in the House who gladly endorse the great powers which are vested in the Minister, but in these abnormal times, I think the House will welcome it because there are at least expectations of something being done in connection with this great housing problem. I do not think that we have done so badly during the war period with housing; if you draw a comparison with the pre-war building of houses, I think we have done very well indeed, and if our expectations have not been fully realised there are good reasons for it. With the peace now being established and better conditions prevailing, I think that with the powers that are being granted here, real progress will be made. I am very much interested in the powers that have now been granted, and if they are rigorously and vigorously enforced, I think that good results will ensue. I am particularly glad to see that provision is made in the regulation for the compulsory letting for residential purposes of dwellings which are temporarily unoccupied. We have the position in the Cape Peninsula, more particuiarly at the seaside resorts, that many houses were not occupied at all. One family alone in Cape Town own no less than five big houses in Muizenberg, and none of them were beneficially occupied during the war and are standing empty today. There are many other people up country and in Cape Town who own two or three houses, one of which at least, is not occupied, and I hope that this Clause will be rigorously enforced, because it will relieve the situation immediately if these houses are available for letting. I do not want to exaggerate, but I know that in my own area alone, I can get 40 to 50 houses which will be available for tenants, but those houses have been closed up; they were not to be had, so I am particularly glad that that power is now being taken, and I only hope that it will be enforced without fear, favour or prejudice, and that those people who hold up these lock-up houses, will be brought to book and forced to let their houses. There is the question of rent which should be charged for these houses, more particularly at the seaside where fancy prices exist for the season, and I hope that the commission as such will see that the conditions of the Rent Board will apply to these houses whether they are at the seaside or anywhere else, so that these houses can be inhabited by those people with moderate incomes and who need these houses very badly. But I think that the powers which are being provided for are not even sufficient to deal, for instance, with the demolition of existing houses, because we find today that there are many dwelling houses which are situated in attractive positions; those houses are being bought with a view to demolition and with a view to turning them into business premises or with a view to using them for some profitable purpose other than mere letting. Under the Housing Act, the demolition of houses falls under the local authorities. The local authority can only deal with houses that were erected before 1920 and houses built since then do not come under the control even of the local authority. I do not like the control of the local authority. I have had experience where the local authority allowed the demolition of hotels and in these times that should never have been allowed. I feel that this right should be vested in the Housing Commission, so that they will see that no house is demolished which is suitable for habitation, and in that connection I will during the Committee Stage move a further addition to the relevant clause by placing some restriction on the right of local authorities or any other authority to demolish houses built or used for residential purposes, whether built before or after the passing of the Housing Act. I want to impress upon the Minister that it is very essential to include this provision. The Minister in introducing the Bill referred to three difficulties that he had in connection with the housing problem. The first difficulty to which he referred was the question of material. It is true that during the war a scarcity had been created because we depended to a large extent on the importation of material, but we did make our own bricks in this country. I want to say that during the last few years many brickfields in this town and elsewhere were closed down because these people had no opportunity of marketing their bricks and they could not finance it. Had a policy been adopted by which the brickfields had been encouraged during the last few years, I think we would have had sufficient bricks on hand to build any number of houses, and I feel that even at this stage, the brickfields should be encouraged to make bricks. If we do not do that, we will have a scarcity later on. Then there is the question of timber. The question of timber is a very important one because I feel it is a commodity in respect of which there is the greatest scarcity. I would like to know from the Minister whether he is making any arrangements to buy timber in Sweden, to be ready for shipment directly the shipping facilities are available. Sweden and Finland have heaps of timber available, but if we wait too long we shall find that it has been snapped up, and we ought to get that market now either by direct purchase or through the trade laying a claim on that timber and leaving it in those countries until shipping facilities are available. There is a third item to which I want to refer in connection with materials, and it is this. We find there is an enormous amount of building material which is frozen at the present time. There are padlocks, screws and other items in small shops, all frozen by the military authorities. I would like to see that that material which is frozen by the military authorities is taken over by the Housing Commission. It amounts to a great deal. Locks and all sorts of accessories have been frozen. Quite recently someone in this town required six feet of copper piping for his boiler. He could not get it anywhere. He had to have it and at last he got assistance through the military, and it was then discovered that the military had frozen 13½ miles of copper piping in Cape Town. This is an illustration of what is going on. If you go out to Pollsmoor, you will find rooms full of baths, rooms full of hot water installations and piping by the mile, being carried away and stolen all the time. But that does not belong to us, it belongs to the Imperial Government. There are rooms full of some of these accessories such as hot water installations and stoves. That belongs to the Imperial Government. I take it we have no control, but what I want to point out is there is a great deal of material available in this country of which we know very little, so this fear of not being able to provide fittings is, I think, unfounded. We will be able to find sufficient material and I do hope that some negotiations will be entered into immediately with the British Government to see that we take over what they have in the line of building appliances and material and I should like to see that we have a proper search made amongst our own war stores. There are cellars full of stocks. We should make a survey of all the available stock. That is as far as materials are concerned. Now I would like to refer to the second trouble to which the Minister referred, i.e. the question of labour. The Minister told us that labour comes under the Minister of Labour and the Controller of Manpower. I should like to know from the Minister of Labour why we cannot make use of the thousands of prisoners-of-war in this country who are skilled artisans. Farmers today who have any of these Italian prisoners-of-war have amongst them carpenters and masons and all sorts of tradesmen. I do not see any reason why we should not make a survey of the available artisans and grant them a temporary permit to reside here for two or three years in order to help us over the difficulty. I am sure we can get thousands of these men to stay here. They would definitely help us over the difficult period of the next three or four years. I impress on the Minister of Labour there is a reservoir of labour here which should not be ignored. The third difficulty is that the Minister wants land and he wishes to go to the limit in expropriating land when necessary. As far as this area is concerned I know that the municipalities have plenty of building land, more particularly round the constituency I represent. I trust that before any expropriation is attempted that that source will be properly investigated, and that before any other land is expropriated we should, if possible, use land owned by the local bodies. Furthermore, I should like to hear from the Minister how far the work has proceeded with the conversion of the military hutments at Pollsmoor and other military camps. I think there must be quite a number of houses ready there. I have seen some of the houses, and I must compliment the contractors on the very efficient way these military hutments have been converted into very suitable dwelling houses. With the resources available in the country and with the powers that are being conferred on the Minister I think we should soon surmount our difficulties. I offer my congratulations to the Minister in bringing forward this measure, and I express the sincere hope that it will be applied without fear, favour or prejudice.

I think the Minister understated the case when he declared this Bill is a blank cheque given to him, but there is no doubt the conditions under which it is being granted do indicate an emergency. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) pointed out that at the end of February, 1944, according to the report of the Van Eck Commission there was a shortage of 150,000 houses in the Union, 30,000 houses in respect of Europeans and 120,000 for non-Europeans. Since then it has been estimated that in order to keep pace with the position we shall have to construct, by 1955, no fewer than 450,000 houses in the Union in order to meet the increased requirements for accommodation in respect of the European and non-European population. If we take note of the fact that in the course of one year the maximum number of houses ever completed for all sections of the population amounted to under 5,000 we can at once appreciate the tremendous problem we are up against. It seems to me we are not going to solve that problem unless practically the whole of the South African population applies itself to the erection of houses. How the problem is going to be solved I do not know, and I am sure the Minister will find it very difficult to solve that problem. But in this Bill he is taking powers which will assist him to solve the problem if a solution is possible. He has pointed out it is an emergency Bill, and he has also pointed out that in a month’s time a proper Housing Bill will have been completed and he will thereafter be able to place it before Parliament. I would therefore ask the Minister not to take the powers of this Bill for more than a year, and then next year to come to this House for a proper Housing Act. It will then be ready for presentation to the House; and it is going very far to ask us to abrogate our functions, to hand them over to a committee of officials, and give them the right to legislate on the expropriation of land, on the amendment of title deeds, on the control and virtually the commandeering of manpower and other things for the purpose of building. That, I say, is going very far indeed. The Minister will say there are provisions in this Act which oblige him, within a period of two weeks of the opening of the Parliamentary Session, to lay on the Table of the House the measures promulgated in terms of the powers of this Bill, and it is within the powers of this House to introduce a resolution cancelling any such provision that it disapproves of. But we know perfectly well a provision of that kind is virtually worthless. It is a much more effective course on our part to be able to say to the Minister when he comes along next year and says he wants an extension of these powers for a further year, to debate the provisions which he has exercised during the past year, and which we object to. I say that is much more effective and much more democratic, and it seems to me it will not amount to what is virtually a complete abrogation of the powers of this House over a period of three years. What is more, it will oblige the Minister to bring before this House as soon as possible a complete and properly thought-out Housing Act which is practically ready. Therefore while I feel obliged to vote for the measure as it stands today I hope that the Minister will not try to take advantage of the fact we are standing behind him in this measure and insist on the three years, but that he will accept an amendment in the Committee stage, limiting it to one year. Another matter I wish to bring up is this. I want to emphasise and concur in the remarks made by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) when he stressed the necessity of buildingcontrol being under the same Minister as housing. Building control is almost a bottle neck in the housing position, and I think that is a matter the Minister must carefully consider, because we want better administration of building control and we want permits to be obtained much more readily and efficiently than they are today. There is another matter I think the Minister will have to pay very serious regard to, and that is we do not want South Africa to be covered with a multitude of stereotyped small houses. We do not want it to become simply a location, and if during the next 10 years we have to provide 450,000 houses in this country, the vast bulk of them having to be built mainly through official channels, we have to be very careful in regard to the consequences this may have for the country if these are stereotyped structures. Exactly the same problem arose in Great Britain, and there regard was had to the character of the houses, they were put in decent surroundings and sites and were so designed that the houses endeared themselves to the residents. We must try and do something on those lines here. The Minister has emphasised these are not temporary houses, but if he is not going to build temporary houses let him consider the type of house a man will want to live in, and want to keep and bring up his family in, with surroundings which will become dear to him, and it should not be the sort of place he will want to get away from as soon as possible. You can have the best Bill in the world, but if it is badly administered it is not of very much value, and you can have a very bad Bill which, if it is efficiently administered, may produce great benefits. I hope that this Bill will be properly administered, that it will be administered sympathetically and efficiently. I would remind the House of the lines—

I have great pleasure in being one of the signatories to this blank cheque the Minister has asked for, because I believe with him that drastic action is absolutely needed if we are to solve this housing problem. But I must say that I cannot agree with the Minister when he asserts that the municipalities have failed in regard to housing. As a member of a municipal council I can say on behalf of my colleagues in Johannesburg and on behalf of other local authorities as well, I am perfectly sure that is not the case. I would ask the Minister to think back to July of last year, when he had not yet decided as to what the financial basis of his building scheme would be. At that time he had not come to an agreement with the municipalities and I think it was October before a decision was made. Large municipalities like Johanneburg went back from the conference about April or May last year fully resolved to do all they could in connection with housing. Nor did they wait for the Minister’s decision. Johannesburg bought land and went in for building houses, and fast as they could. In Johannesburg we called for tenders for 1,250 houses. The only response was one tender, and we found that owing to labour difficulties the contractor could not do that work. We invited tenders again, but on this occasion in order to facilitate tendering we invited tenders in respect of 250 houses, 100 houses, 50 houses and 25 houses. In that way we tried to induce different builders to tender for the construction of these houses. Unfortunately the result was just the same; we got only one tender. There are difficulties that the municipalities have found impossible to surmount, and it is not the municipalities’ fault that projects have not made more substantial progress. I would further ask the Minister to bear in mind the special difficulties that confront some of the very small local authorities. They have to think twice before tackling any housing scheme. My experience in. Provincial Council and in this House has shown they are faced with difficulties in regard to the payment of their light and water responsibilities and it will be very difficult for them to go ahead with the building scheme until the financai aspect has been thoroughly cleared up. In regard to big towns like Johannesburg the position is this. We have bought the land. It has been a very expensive business. Here at Cape Town the municipality is more fortunate because near at hand you have a large extent of Crown land. In Johannesburg unfortunately we had to pay for every square foot and we had to spend nearly two million for land for housing in the last few years. So I think the Municipality of Johannesburg cannot be accused of apathy in regard to the housing scheme we have tried to carry out. I must say that today I have listened to theories in regard to finance and in regard to building that have rather surprised me. Some of these theories may embody very fine ideals, but practical means and methods are required to build houses. Let me give you a practical illustration. Take, for example, a house that costs £1,018. This is an ordinary house and the cost does not include sewerage or light or roads. In calculating what the charge to the tenant will be we put down 10 per cent. for depreciation; that is £101 16s. That would not be too high a figure for depreciation and maintenance. Then let us set down rent at 12s. 6d. per week; that would be £32 10s. per annum. The basic loss is therefore £69 6s. per annum. The proportion of loss that would be borne by the municipality would be £17 6s. 6d. and the Government loss would be £51 19s. 6d. If the Municipality of Johannesburg wants immediately to build 543 such three-roomed houses for the low-wage earner that scheme would work out to a loss of £40,000 to the Government and £13,334 to the municipality per annum. Small local authorities and big local authorities have to consider the financial side. After all is said and done, it does not matter whether the ratepayer pays or the Government pays, it all comes back ultimately to the taxpayer having to pay out. I was very disappointed when I heard the Minister say today that the new Assistant-Director of Housing had stated he was not entirely against new ideas for building houses such as the rumble house. Nor am I against any type of house if it is proved to be an improvement. But I ask him to consider seriously before he builds them. Johannesburg City Councillors went out to inspect a few and the result was that those who were in favour of new ideas are now definitely for brick houses. I would say this to him. Nothing yet has been found to take the place of bricks for building houses unless it is Aberdeen granite, and that is too expensive to bring out here. Bricks are the only things to build a house with. This little verse contains a lot of truth—it is by an English building expert.

I tell this tale, ’tis strictly true, Just by way of convincing you, How very little since things were made Things have altered in the building trade.

That is true today. I would ask the Assistant-Director to consider bricks only. The price of a sample house of two rooms built by the Council of Ermelo for £130 with bricks convinces me that no house can be built more cheaply than with bricks, taking everything into account, especially durability. In his task the Minister will find that neither material nor finance will prove his greatest difficulty. His greatest difficulty will be labour. I would like to read this out from the report of a conference held at Pretoria between the National Housing and Planning Commission and representatives of local authorities, soldiers’ organisations and trade unions. One of the committees quoted this extract from the report of the Cost-Plus Commission—

In regard to labour, information was given to the conference that we have 22,000 registered in the building industry, while the estimated number of building artisans in the forces is 4,000. The number of men in the forces who could receive intensive training is 4,000, making a total of 30,000. That is not half of what we need. But if there is inefficiency amongst them I suggest to the Minister to consider a system of paying a little more to those men who are willing to work a little harder, the ordinary trade unionist will not do his best at his work when he finds that his mate is paid the same wage for doing much less. I consider it is this inefficiency to be found in the trade unions that has a lot to do with what I may call the “ca’canny” strike of today. Certainly the labour question in regard to the housing problem is very difficult. I am glad the Minister envisages in his scheme that natives will be allowed to build houses under the supervision of white labour. I hope the Minister will say that we shall be able to have a system whereby houses may be built for the natives at prices they can afford to pay. They certainly will not be able to pay for houses built on a basis of labour that is not at its maximum efficiency but which costs 4s. an hour. It is impossible for the native to pay for a cottage of that price, at the wage he earns. The wages of the native artisans and of the labourers have been raised to a fairly good figure. At one time they were paid at a rate of approximately 18s. a week for various classes of work in the building industry. Today I am pleased to say the native gets a better rate of wage; he gets double what he used to a week, which is a big improvement. I hope that tendency will continue, and if the native was better trained in the building trade so that he could apply more intelligence to his work he would be worth more than he gets today and he would receive more money. It would be cheaper labour really even at an increased rate of pay, if he were more efficient. If he does good work and makes fewer mistakes he will soon justifly an increase in wages.

In the first place I want to avail myself of the opportunity of thanking the Minister for providing us with houses last year under the Department of Social Welfare. I want to thank him for the speed with which he rendered assistance for providing those houses immediately. But we now come to the matter of permanent houses there, and the public feeling is very strong in that regard. Where the Minister is now being given a blank cheque and while houses will be erected, I would like to see Christiana given priority in respect of the erection of houses. The need there is very great. I was there last Saturday and was surprised to see 200 people gathering in a few moments and they instructed me to request the Minister to render us assistance.

What is the number now required?

Approximately 50 houses. 86 collapsed but provisionally 50 will be of assistance. I further want to point out to the Minister that under the Department of Social Welfare a loss is at present sustained on those houses, because I think the Department of Social Welfare has to pay for those houses to the Department of Irrigation. As soon as the temporary houses are replaced the expense will disappear. The municipality there is desirous of meeting the Minister as much as possible and will make land available, and even the ground on which the houses stood could perhaps be used if a type of house is erected which will be capable of resisting a possible flood in future. I want to ask the Minister to give consideration to that immediately and I trust the houses will be erected within six months. The houses there at present are exceptionally warm in summer. They were constructed of asbestos, have no ceilings and are almost like ovens, and in winter time it is almost impossible for one to live there because they have mud floors and they are damp, the interiors have no linings and there are draughts. They have been constructed for hard workers on the schemes, but at present old people and women and children live in them It is a tragic position and that is why I desire the Minister as soon as possible to meet us. Give us the material. We will provide the land. There are many workers who could be obtained locally, people who are competent to build themselves. I have asked the Minister of Labour, but he is unable to render assistance and he has stated that he would do anything in his power to render assistance in so far as his Department was concerned. Assistance has been given by the Department and we were most grateful for it. Where the Minister of Labour has expressed his willingness I trust that the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation will add his assistance. We are faced with a great difficulty, apart from the assistance that we require. We contemplated tackling the matter ourselves but we were unable to obtain permits. I again received a letter today which I will pass on to the Minister. The writer states that he is able to build himself. He has the material ready on the spot but that he wrote two months ago and has as yet not obtained a permit.

Was that at Christiana?

Yes. I shall be pleased if the Minister himself would visit us. We would appreciate it very much. Or let him otherwise send a person authorised by his Depratment to discuss matters there with the municipality. He would then point out the land and they may start building operations forthwith. I express the hope that the people will be afforded an opportunity of purchasing those houses or will otherwise be enabled to hire them at a cheap rental. Under the sub-economic scheme we have tackled matters in the past and houses have been erected for which people pay £1 or £1 2s. 6d. per month, and there were approximately 20 applications for each house. The cost of the houses was approximately £250 each. Those houses are somewhat better than those occupied by the people originally. Houses could be erected there at a figure of from £250 to £400 and no house will be unoccupied. They will all be taken up. The people earnestly desire houses and I would appreciate the Minister giving his full attention to the matter. I merely rose to direct attention to the special position prevailing at Christiana and it is not my wish to make the matter more difficult but merely to ask the Minister for immediate relief. I would like to convey a message to my constituency and if the Minister is not in a position to reply I would appreciate if he would subsequently state in public, or say to me privately, when a start will be made. The people are getting a feeling of lack of confidence in me that I have so far been unable to persuade the Minister to visit us or because I have not as yet succeeded in obtaining houses for them.

I shall endeavour to solve your problem.

I shall pass on the lack of confidence to the Minister. I have performed my duty as far as the Minister of Irrigation, the Minister of Labour and this Minister is concerned, and it is not a case of my not having done my duty. I shall simply say that I have done my duty in respect of three Ministers and that it is the fault of the Government that no houses are provided. I now wish to propose that the debate be adjourned.

I am unable to accept it. We must carry on till seven o’clock.

That is all I wanted to say and I trust that the Minister will give consideration to the matter.

It must be evident to anyone who has followed the course of this housing question that this emergency measure is absolutely necessary. In ordinary circumstances an Act like the 1937 Act would have been able to meet the position, but the delay has been caused by various bodies and municipalities, and the Minister has been compelled to come forward with this extraordinary measure, as he calls it. It is a very peculiar thing that the Minister has been blamed, particularly by some of the Opposition members for the delay caused through not coming to finality in regard to the housing of our returned soldiers, but the Minister is not to blame, for several reasons. One of the reasons is that there have been a variety of private schemes. The present chairman of the commission had one of his own, other people have also had private housing schemes which delayed the measure. Four meetings of treasurers of municipalities were held in Pretoria to discuss housing for returned soldiers. They came to decisions and it was decided by the Minister of Demobilisation to appoint ten men on a Housing Commission with the City Engineer of Johannesburg as the Director of Housing. From what has been said it is clear that the Minister is not to blame for the lack of progress; a progress which he expected when he formed this body. After hearing several speakers today I want to say that the main point in this question has been missed except by the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Sullivan) and he himself missed the main point in one respect. The crux of this question is this, that so far as any arrangement has been made up to now, the great majority of returned soldiers can neither buy nor rent the expensive houses that have been suggested. If there is one thing we ought to do in this country now that hostilities have ceased in Europe it is to see that the men who have been fighting our battles and have allowed us to live in this country in comparative comfort, compared with other countries— men who were prepared to lay down then lives and who have suffered more than we who stayed at home can tell—have roofs over their heads when they come back. At a group meeting of our Party a military representative reported what he had seen up North when he was sent by the Party to discover what the men at the front were asking for and thinking about. His most important remark was: “What the men want when they come back is a roof over their heads”. I ask: What are we offering them? While I have to agree, as the Minister has had to agree, that the Defence regulations must be rigid in time of war, I feel nevertheless that if it is at all possible we must release now the men necessary for the building of houses. To my mind there is only one way of meeting the present position, and that has not been mentioned yet. I say definitely that this war will never be finished until the men who have been fighting for us have been properly housed. I particularly want to say to the Minister of Finance in this respect that in my opinion what ought to be done is this: We ought to take the price of a house in 1938 and its price today, and as a war measure the difference between these two prices should be paid to these soldiers to build their houses. These men who come back should at least return to the same conditions pertaining in regard to building houses as when they left. It is perhaps unfortunate that the Minister of Finance, who is a bachelor, does not realise the value of certain amenities as well as a married man, but if he only knew what the men think he would seriously consider what I am now saying. Without wishing to brag, it is a well-known fact that Port Elizabeth is recognised in this country as the leading municipality in regard to housing. As a matter of fact in recent years we have built no less than 6,514 houses. I will give you an idea of what is happening in Port Elizabeth today. We have called for tenders for 162 houses in a new township; houses of two bedrooms. One year ago these houses would have cost £740. (The member who spoke just now about a house costing £130 is just talking nonsense). Today such a house costs £1,000. I repeat a two bedroomed house a year ago—not in 1939 or 1940—cost £740. Today that house is costing £1,000. I represent a working-class community and I know just exactly where the scheme we have proposed is going to fail. A house of two bedrooms under the Government scheme at 4 per cent. costs in rent £8 13s. 4d. a month. I ask you what artisan can pay that? We in Port Elizabeth in our scheme are lending money at 31 per cent. For that same house and at that rate the rent is £6 19s. 5d. a month. The rent for instance of a four-roomed house under the Government scheme is £15 4s. 5d. a month. Will anyone say that the scheme the Government has brought forward can be successful at these prices? The two-bedroomed house cost £1,000 and the four-bedroomed house £1,750. I will give you the position which I think should operate if we are going to make a success of housing and prevent trouble arising in this country. Do not forget that the Government today can get money at 31 per cent. and has large post office savings funds on which it pays only 21 per cent. If you introduced a scheme of interest and redemption over a period of 30 years at 2½ per cent., a two-bedroomed house would cost £6 11s. 5d. as against £8 13s. 4d. a month, and a four-roomed house would cost £11 9s. 11d. as against £15 4s. 5d. a month.

Your municipal taxes are too high.

I want to speak of another matter which I consider is one of the most dangerous things which is happening in this country today. Because the Administrator of Natal visited the Minister, the Minister has promised Natal its own Housing Board. Why should Natal be nursed in this way? If there is one town in the Union which has been a delinquent about its housing it is Durban. What does Durban really want today? It has been offered since 1920 money at ¾ per cent. and it is not even amongst the nine principal municipalities in the country in providing housing. Yet they come along now and say that they want to be on their own in this matter. Why did the Minister give way to them? I like the Minister but he has fallen badly here.

Your fallen idol.

He is the most hardworking Minister in the Cabinet and I feel sorry for him. I had to defend him against a Johannesburg councillor who criticised him because his first Housing Bill had not been successful, and it now appears that their city engineer is principally to blame for this lack of success.

I would like to know what the member knows about Johannesburg.

Order, order.

I want to say this to the Minister. Port Elizabeth has done more for housing than any other city in the Union, but Port Elizabeth has paid very dearly for work that ought to have been done by the Government. I want to ask the Minister or any other fair-minded man here, whether he thinks that the crisis which has been caused by the war should be paid for by municipalities. Is it reasonable that any city should be rated for sub-economic houses instead of all of us being taxed by the Government for such houses? If any postwar housing scheme is introduced it should be based on a tax and not a rate, a tax which affects everyone, particularly some of our friends who have made so much money during the war in Johannesburg and elsewhere.

Why should I pay for houses in Port Elizabeth?

Because it is a national matter: Mr. Speaker I move the adjournment.

I suggest the hon. member should finish his speech first.

Well, I was asked to move the adjournment but I did not think you would accept it. There is another point I wish to bring forward. We are assuming that municipalities are not too willing to help the Government in regard to sub-economic and other housing schemes. I am not the least surprised at that when I consider that Port Elizabeth has lost many thousands of pounds on sub-economic schemes and are now being asked to lose more money. There are other bodies in this country who have been doing housing work and doing it well, namely the numerous building societies, and they all have the administrative staff necessary to carry on. They can, if they are encouraged to do so (as they did under the 1937 Act), help the Minister considerably in regard to housing, and do not forget that there are a large number of people who are not prepared to be associated with municipal schemes, but prefer to put up their own houses, because of that I want to know from the Minister under Clause 2 sub-section (v) exactly how he will employ building societies in this Act. I hope he will make a definite statement on this matter because building societies agree with this sub-section and are willing to help him. In conclusion I want to say that as regards native housing I once made an experiment in the Grey High School, Port Elizabeth. I got the boys there to build a tools room by one of the simplest methods of building, which requires only unskilled labour, the Pise De Terre method. Buildings erected in this manner have lasted for hundreds of years on the Continent. Perhaps it would not be a bad idea, as was stated in the “Cape Times” recently, if the Minister investigated, particularly for natives, whether they could not build houses by the Pise De Terre method. In conclusion I want to say that while this is a most extraordinary Bill it has been caused by extraordinary circumstances and I hope that the people of the country will realise that the Minister is really in earnest in regard to the building of houses for ex-service men. Yesterday I received a newspaper with banner headlines saying: “The Minister at Fault”. The Minister has not been at fault. He has done all he could do and I hope that when this Bill is in operation the people will realise that our first duty is to the fighting men who have protected us.

If the Acting Prime Minister is prepared to accept the motion then I move—

I second.

Agreed to.

Debate adjourned; to be resumed on 31st May.