Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

The clause caused us some considerable difficulty when we studied the Bill. The hon. the Minister will remember that it is the clause to which I personally have the main objection in so far as the Bill is concerned. Indeed, had it not been for the fact that there were several other clauses which aimed to implement the recommendations of the Viljoen Commission on the Penal System and introduced a few alleviating factors into the prison system in South Africa, we might well have opposed the Bill at Second Reading.

I asked the hon. the Minister to give the reasons for the introduction of this far-reaching change in the prison system. When I say “far-reaching”, I have in mind the wording of the actual clause, although in practice I do not think that it is going to make that amount of difference. I suggested at the time that the reason why this was being introduced was that the hon. the Minister and the department were irritated by the number of court cases which had been brought in the past by prisoners who felt they had been deprived of privileges unlawfully. Another reason was that the hon. the Minister was trying to anticipate future appeals against decisions which he or the Commissioner or anybody to whom authority had been delegated in terms of section 93 of the Prisons Act would make. The hon. the Minister of course, in his reply yesterday to the Second Reading debate, fully bore out my contention since that was the main reason he gave for the introduction of this amendment to section 22 of the Prisons Act. He said, inter alia—

He went on to say that the prisoner—

That, of course, is exactly what I said. I said that the hon. the Minister wanted to forestall any future appeals to the courts as far as the removal of privileges was concerned. He then went on to say something extraordinary and this is where I think most of the irritation comes in—

In other words, he is annoyed at the fact that prisoners obtain money from …

No, it was a statement of fact. I am not annoyed.

Well, the hon. the Minister has put it in a very irritable fashion, if I may say so. He sounded very irritable. He said I am in a chronic state of irritation with him, but I should think that the opposite is much more likely to be the case, viz. that the hon. the Minister is in a chronic state of irritation with me. In that regard I have to inform him that I could not care two hoots about that.

Anyway, the point is that, whether or not prisoners get money from overseas—and I do not know whether this is true or not—the hon. the Minister, as Minister of Justice in name anyway, should surely accept that any man has got the right to go at any time to the courts of law to establish what his rights are in any regard whatsoever. If I remember correctly, it was the hon. the Minister who made a maiden speech on the whole question of legal aid in South Africa—I think I am right in saying that—and he was very eloquent about the right of people to have defence and to go to the courts. However, since he has been in a position of authority over the prisons, it annoys him that people try, anyway, to establish rights which the hon. the Minister considers to be mere privileges.

I still have not established why he needs to change the law. I know why he wants to do it. I know he wants to do it to stop any appeals in the future, to put it quite beyond the realm of possibility that a prisoner would ever win a case in this regard. I know he is probably thinking of appeals that may be forthcoming. There is one, I believe, on the question of newspapers—I shall not go into any detail on that. In any event, I think he is anticipating that there will be other appeals as far as study privileges are concerned, privileges which the hon. the Minister in his lack of wisdom—I certainly intend to take this up with him when his Vote is discussed—has decided to withdraw from the post-matric level upwards from all prisoners in our gaols. That is the one thing that kept long-term prisoners occupied. It kept men occupied who, while they may not have had good judgment, have intelligence and therefore need to be intellectually occupied. Yet the hon. the Minister has decided to withdraw the privilege of any study facilities above the matric level. I think that that is an absolute tragedy because it was one of the good things of our prison system that these people were encouraged to study and that in fact many of them took degrees. The reason he gave me for withdrawing this privilege …

Order! I do not think the hon. member must go too wide on this.

Very well, Sir. I shall leave it for discussion when we deal with the hon. the Minister’s Vote. Let me just say that I have no doubt that he is anticipating appeals in this regard and that he is making quite sure that nobody is going to stand a snowball’s chance of winning any such case in the courts of law.

In view of the decision he quoted yesterday in connection with the Hassim case, which was heard way back in 1973 and in respect of which the decision was clearly given by Judge Diemont that in fact the Commissioner could withdraw such privileges, that he had full authority under the Prisons Act and indeed under the regulations to withdraw any privileges which he had granted to prisoners, will the hon. the Minister tell me why he thinks it necessary now to set this down in such intricate details and to make sure that no prisoner shall even be granted a hearing on the question of the withdrawal of any privilege? I want to point out to the hon. the Minister that the Commissioner cannot possibly know every case, that in any event he has delegated his authority in many cases to persons of lower rank and that he therefore has to rely entirely on their judgement. Does the hon. the Minister not consider it obviously unfair that the prisoner, who may—I do not say “has”—indeed have been unfairly treated in this regard, should have no opportunity whatsoever of putting his case to any superior official? Does the hon. the Minister not think it fair that some hearing should be given to the man whose valued privilege has been withdrawn?

No.

No! Mr. Chairman, I won’t even bother to argue with people who want to reintroduce the cat-o’-nine-tails and who want to increase the number of strokes to be given at a whipping, etc. They have closed minds; they have no compassion and they have no understanding of the conditions in prison. They could not care less. I want to point out…

You are being carried away, Helen.

No, I am not carried away. I only find it so unbearable that people can be so lacking in any compassion towards prisoners, the most helpless of human beings. They are thé most helpless of human beings. The difference between life that is bearable in prison and life that is unbearable in prison, depends on privileges. After all; the rights are down to a minimum: clothing, food and shelter and that sort of thing.

What rights are being taken away?

I am not talking about rights being taken away. I am saying that the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life depends on the privileges. If a man in charge of a prisoner or a group of prisoners is lacking in any compassion, he can make life pretty unbearable. I think the hon. the Minister ought to allow a hearing in those cases so as to know whether or not one of the officials was acting injudiciously, was acting officiously or without any consideration for the human elements involved in being deprived of liberty. I know that Judge Diemont says in his judgment that it is not only a question of custody and rehabilitation, but also a question of custody and punishment. I take the view that the emphasis should be on custody and rehabilitation and not on custody and punishment, because I believe that the punishment is the deprivation of liberty. That in itself is a punishment, and I do not think it should be extended so as to include further punishments, unless a man has offended against the regulations in such a gross manner that it is necessary for him to receive further punishment. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, it was quite surprising that the hon. member for Houghton seemed to be reasonably calm during the Second Reading debate. This morning it is quite apparent why this was so. The hon. member found herself in a very difficult position at that stage. She was not prepared. At that stage the hon. member had not yet had the opportunity to consult her doubtful advisers. It is quite clear that the hon. member does not want to be convinced of the goodwill of the hon. the Minister. That hon. member sees only red and black. She sees red whenever she sees someone in uniform: A policeman or a prisons official. I do want to point out to the hon. member that there are also a few people of colour in the prisons service and serving in a uniform. The hon. member should not think it is only Whites who allegedly ill-treat the prisoners, as she has just alleged, and that only Whites are responsible for the alleged impossible conditions in the prisons of which she claims to have knowledge. I want to invite the hon. member to visit one of the large prisons in my constituency, viz. Baviaanspoort, so that the hon. member may see how these people are being treated.

They might as well keep her there.

Yes, the hon. member might as well stay there. We shall not charge her anything for it.

That hon. member knows very well what clause 4 of this Bill provides. The hon. member knows very well how section 22 of the Act will be amended by clause 4. The point at issue in section 22 of the principal Act, or as that section is being amended by clause 4, is not the rights of people. The point at issue is the determination and granting of privileges and indulgences. Surely that is quite clear, and the hon. member knows it. I do not want to underestimate the hon. member’s intelligence. Surely the hon. member knows what rights prisoners have. If there is anyone in this House who knows precisely what rights a prisoner has, it is that hon. member. However, the hon. member should not utter a half-truth here and say that she does not know whether any money is coming from abroad. Surely the hon. member knows that money is coming from abroad. Does not the hon. member also handle some of that money? The rights of a prisoner are defined in the Prisons Service Regulations. If we look at the regulations, we find that the rights of a prisoner are precisely defined from regulation 98 to regulation 122. The hon. member mentioned a few of them. For instance, there is the right to have food, clothing, medical aid, drinking water, washing water, etc …

And the right to go on a hunger strike.

Yes, we cannot even prevent some of them from going on a hunger strike. However, that is not the point at issue. I think that in all fairness I have to point out what happens if the rights of a prisoner are tampered with. The hon. member should listen now, because I do not want to hear the hon. member talking about the same thing again. When the rights of a prisoner are tampered with, that prisoner has every right in the world to lodge a complaint. Let me mention an example. Let us take the case of Baviaanspoort, which I know. Suppose there is a prisoner in that prison who misbehaves. The prisoner who misbehaves then offends a warder, whether he is a White or a Black warder. The warder then says to him: “Listen, because of the noise you made last night, as a result of which nobody could sleep, you are not getting any food this morning.” The first thing that prisoner then does, is to complain to the member of the prisons service appointed over him. The machinery in terms of regulation 103 immediately comes into operation. What does that provide? It not only provides that the head of a prison should see every prisoner daily; it also provides that every complaint and request made by a prisoner should be examined and disposed of as far as possible. In other words, when a right has indeed been tampered with, all the channels in the world are immediately available to the prisoner concerned. But it goes much further than that, Sir. Regulation 103 also provides that the head of the prison has to lay any complaint or request which he cannot dispose of before the commanding officer, without delay, for proper attention and disposal. Now one may ask: Why should the head lay it before a commanding officer? I want to explain this in detail to the hon. member as well. Let us take for example the case of a request—not a complaint, but a request—which is made at the Bellville prison. Suppose a prisoner may receive two visits a month, and the hon. member herself paid that prisoner two visits in one month. Now that prisoner finds out that his brother is returning from the border. However, he no longer has a visiting privilege. He then goes to the head of the prison and says: “Sir, I have received a letter and my brother, who is coming back from the border, would like to visit me. But the hon. member for Houghton has already used up my two visits.” Then the commanding officer at Pollsmoor is approached. That commanding officer then decides whether he is going to grant another indulgence. Does the hon. member want to suggest that that is also a right? That is an indulgence. That is the point. But, Sir, it goes even further. Suppose such an indulgence were withdrawn. What happens then? The following day that prisoner may again make a request. That request has to be dealt with. The channels exist. The prisoner may even ask to see the Commissioner of Prisons. In terms of this regulation the commanding officer has to forward the request to the Commissioner or the chairman of the Prisons Board, depending on the case. He is compelled to do so. If he does not do so, that hon. member will know of it. After all, she visits those people regularly. I do not know why the hon. the Minister allows her to do it so often, but she does it in any case. The point at issue here is an indulgence which then becomes a privilege. What are the indulgences? Let us look at a few. There is for example the indulgence to be able to write letters, the indulgence to listen to music, the indulgence to be able to receive certain reading matter, etc. It goes much further than that, Sir. A prisoner may even request permission of the chief of the prison to write abroad. Those prisoners in particular that the hon. member knows, do that quite often. Such a prisoner may even apply for stamps to put on his envelopes. He may ask for them and he may receive them.

Sir, I now want to mention an absurd example, and I want the hon. member to listen carefully to this. Suppose Kallie Knoetze were fighting Joe Frazier and there were a number of boxers in that prison.

Suppose they go to the chief of the prison and say to him: “Sir, we would like to listen to the broadcast of the fight tonight at 10 o’clock.” Out of the goodness of his heart the chief of the prison agrees and even gives them a radio. Round about nine o’clock that evening, however, an uproar breaks out. The prisoners make a noise, fight and carry on. The warders intervene and say that as punishment the prisoners may not listen to the boxing match that evening. The warders manage to quell the disturbance at approximately ten minutes to ten. What does the hon. member want them to do now? She wants the warder to hold a court hearing and to hear the prisoners’ complaints at ten minutes to ten, just before the boxing begins. They have to advance reasons and he has to listen to them. [Interjections.] What is more, there may be a clever prisoner who says: “I do not want to talk to you, because my advocate is not present. I want to listen to the boxing.” Does the hon. member realize the situation this could give rise to? That is how absurd it is. [Interjections.]

For overseas consumption the hon. member is maintaining here in the House that the hon. the Minister is once again introducing underhand, fascist, Nazi-type of legislation. That is what she professes. But she knows that it is not true. I want to appeal to the other hon. members of the PFP to tell the hon. member that she does not understand the matter, and even if she does understand it, she is being wilful. [Interjections.] What the hon. member does not want to understand is that the privileges and indulgences are a social therapy. The point is that the prisoner should constantly try to better his position. How does he do that? He does so by better and good conduct. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I must confess that at this stage I feel rather like the United Nations troops must have felt when they went into Lebanon the other day. I feel I might get caught in what has been a running crossfire between the hon. Minister of Justice and the hon. member for Houghton for many years. We, too, have our views on the particular clause which the Committee is considering at this stage and we also have an amendment on the Order Paper standing in my name. We feel that the clause as it currently reads does go too far. We feel that this was perhaps not intended. Our view of the way the clause reads is that, in fact, it does seek to put the Commissioner of Prisons above the law. As we read the clause, it does not only give him the right to withdraw privileges which he has granted, but it appears to us that he also has the right to withdraw any privilege or indulgence wheresoever it might come from. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment—

The hon. the Minister did indicate in his reply to the Second Reading debate that this was in fact his intention and that he would be prepared to consider this amendment. I certainly hope that he has found no reason in the interim to change his mind, because we believe that this amendment will certainly cope with our difficulty and I hope will go a long way towards coping with the difficulty which the Official Opposition has in regard to this clause. I can well understand the desire of the Government not to accept the amendment of the hon. member for Houghton, because I can certainly see that her amendment will make the entire administration of the situation difficult, and in certain cases perhaps impossible. I believe the right sort of regulations which give prisoners a right to be heard on certain subjects from time to time, do exist. There are inspections of prisons and prisoners are given opportunities to bring up situations which they feel are inequitable or unjust, for instance when the Commissioner of Prisons or one of his officials unjustly takes away a privilege which the Commissioner of Prisons has granted in the first place. We must remember that the privileges which he or his officials grant, are the only privileges which they will be able to take away—if this amendment is accepted. We must bear in mind that, after all, these are prisoners, people who have sinned against society and who are in prison to be punished. If the hon. the Minister can see fit to accept the amendment, which—I repeat—is one which seeks to allow the Commissioner of Prisons only to withdraw those privileges and indulgences which he himself has granted, we on this side of the House will feel a lot happier about this particular clause, which is the only one in this Bill with which we have any basic disagreement.

Mr. Chairman, I simply rise to indicate to the hon. member for East London North that I am prepared to accept his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, my problem with regard to this matter is partly the same as that of the hon. member for Houghton. Partly it also has regard to another aspect of the matter. The hon. the Minister said to us in his Second Reading speech (Hansard, 16 March 1978, col. 3188)—

That is all that was said in this regard, i.e. that there was a need for a provision giving the Commissioner of Prisons or persons delegated by him the right to withdraw indulgences and privileges which the Commissioner has granted. Without any doubt the Commissioner has always had this right, because the prisons function to a very large extent on the basis—as the hon. the Minister rightly indicated—that indulgences and privileges are used partly as therapy and partly as encouragement in order to obtain good conduct. It was not said once that the right of review by the courts of any decision made by the Commissioner in this regard was being taken away. No indication was given of this in the Second Reading speech of the hon. the Minister or in any of the speeches made by hon. members on that side of the House. It was only later in the reply by the hon. the Minister that we heard that the cases to which the hon. member for Houghton referred had indeed given rise to these apparently drastic provisions, i.e. that there would be no hearing of any prisoner whose privileges and indulgences are withdrawn. The point at issue is not rights. There is no question about that. The rights of prisoners and the rules proclaimed and formulated with regard to the administration of prisons are clear and are enforced in other ways. In this case the point at issue is this essential characteristic of prisons, that indulgences and privileges are granted to encourage people to improve their conduct. That is what the prisoners are there for to a large extent, i.e. for rehabilitation. But unfortunately the hon. the Minister did not think fit to mention that in his Second Reading speech, and apparently the hon. members opposite were not aware of the fact that something else was being envisaged here, i.e. that the right of review, which every subject of the State has when he feels that he is aggrieved, was going to be taken away from the prisoner. That is the actual effect of this provision. The purpose is not to give the Commissioner the right to withdraw indulgences which he has granted. The purpose is to exclude the courts completely. Unfortunately the hon. the Minister neglected to tell us how many cases had arisen to make it necessary, at this late stage, now that prisons have been in use in South Africa for more than a century, to provide for this curtailment by means of legislation. That is what this matter is about. That is the first point.

My second point I have already put, but unfortunately the hon. the Minister did not comment on it. That is the question of whether the harm caused by placing this provision on the Statute Book—I am not saying anything more about it—can be offset by the advantages it will entail. The advantage lies in the fact that where prisoners are now able, rightly or wrongly, to request review by the courts, which probably causes a lot of work for the department, which is expensive, and which can also—I concede that—cause undermining of discipline, that privilege is now being withdrawn. But are the disadvantages of the present situation so great that we have to have this provision which proclaims to the world that the prisoners in South Africa are not heard.

Now you are spelling it out for them, aren’t you?

Well, it is written in the legislation.

It is not written there.

It is written here in clause 4 that the indulgence can be withdrawn without furnishing any reasons and without hearing such prisoner or any other person. If hon. members understand English, there is no problem with this. I am asking the hon. the Minister: Are we prepared to broadcast this provision for the sake of something we have not heard yet? How many cases of review can there be and what disadvantages can they hold? Can we not leave the situation as it is at the moment? Is there something so radically wrong that we have to do this thing?

Mr. Chairman, I simply do not understand the hon. member who has just sat down. He reads the clause correctly and states very clearly that we are not dealing with rights here, but with privileges and indulgences. He then says that in future there will be no right of review. There will always be a right of review when rights are taken away, but there will not be review if privileges and indulgences are taken away, because privileges and indulgences do not confer the right to such a claim. Privileges and indulgences are part of the treatment of any detainee, and as a result of the fact that it is part of the process of treatment, they can summarily be withdrawn by the Department of Prisons if that detainee does not react favourably to privileges and indulgences granted to him. Someone with legal training who says here that there will be no right of review with regard to rights, I have to write off completely. I want to write him off, just as I want to write off the hon. member for Houghton, she who made the remark this morning that perhaps we wanted to introduce heavier penalties again. As far as I am concerned, I cannot argue with people who only want to follow a policy of laissez faire, people who simply want things to take their course and who therefore think that crime might as well increase as well. I cannot agree with that. Therefore I want to say to the hon. member for Johannesburg North that there will always be review of the withdrawal of rights, but that there will definitely not be review with regard to privileges and indulgences, because they do not create rights.

Mr. Chairman, we on this side, as mentioned during the Second Reading, have certain reservations concerning this clause. However, I would like to thank the hon. the Minister for indicating that he intends accepting the amendment moved by the hon. member for East London North. We feel that this certainly clarifies the situation because we were concerned about the withdrawal of privileges and indulgences which might also be relevant to other matters. We believe that the withdrawal of privileges and indulgences must be relative to the privileges and indulgences granted to a prisoner by the Commissioner. The granting of privileges and indulgences is something which we regard as an important part of discipline and of encouraging good behaviour, and thereby encouraging rehabilitation. Therefore, I believe that this is important. We believe that the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton has considerable practical implications and difficulties.

It would appear that the privileges and indulgences granted by the Commissioner, should be granted expeditiously and with immediate effect. It would appear, however, that by accepting the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton considerable delays and difficulties could be caused in granting or withdrawing certain privileges or indulgences.

There is one other aspect which is not quite clear. During his Second Reading speech the hon. the Minister mentioned that the Commissioner may delegate certain authority. As far as that delegation of authority relates to this clause, I would like the hon. the Minister to tell us at what level such delegation of power is granted by the Commissioner as far as it concerns the granting and withdrawal of privileges and indulgences. To what rank or level in the prison service will such powers be delegated? I believe that we have moved away from the position in which it was at the discretion of the Minister. It is now at the discretion of the Commissioner. The hon. the Minister has indicated that the Commissioner can delegate such authority. We would like to know from the hon. the Minister to what level and to what rank such authority will be delegated by the Commissioner, particularly as far as this is concerned.

Mr. Chairman, I would very much like somebody in the NRP to tell me what other privileges there might be other than the ones granted by the Commissioner or by the person to whom he delegates his authority. I am not going to oppose the amendment. However, quite frankly, I do not see the effect of it. I cannot see what difference it makes. That is perhaps why the hon. the Minister has so readily agreed to accept the amendment. [Interjections.] If somebody could explain to me what difference it makes, I would be very glad indeed, because I cannot see this making the slightest difference. I want to know what other privileges and indulgences there are other than the ones that can be granted by the Commissioner or by the officials to whom this right has been delegated.

I do not know of any others. Maybe I am ignorant, but perhaps the hon. the Minister will tell me. We are not going to oppose the amendment, but I quite honestly do not see that it makes the slightest difference to the clause. To my mind, anyway, there are no other indulgences and privileges, except the ones granted in terms of the proposed new section 22(1)(a).

However, what we have not dealt with at all is the whole question of the regulations. This, of course, is the important part of the granting of privileges and indulgences by the Commissioner or by any other official to whom this right is delegated.

There was the Hassim case in 1973. Hassim was a prisoner on Robben Island who objected to the fact that certain study privileges had been withdrawn from him and that he was not allowed to use library books because of some breach of discipline. He and his fellow-appellant won part of that case and that is now reflected in the change of law which the hon. the Minister is introducing in a later clause which we shall argue when the particular clause is being considered. As far as the withdrawal of study privileges was concerned and the withdrawal of the use of the facilities of the library, the appellant lost his case because Mr. Justice Diemont held that these were privileges and indulgences and just as the Commissioner could grant them, he could withdraw them. This is one of the reasons why I again ask the hon. the Minister why, in the light of that court decision, he thinks it is necessary to amend the provision further.

What the hon. the Minister did do, however, was to amend the regulations between 1973 and the present date. He amended the prisons regulations and it was again made quite clear that permission to study or the utilization of any library in terms of the regulations was subject to the discretion of the Commissioner and “the provisions of the said regulation may in no way be so construed as implying that such permission and/ or utilization of any library allows any prisoner a right which he can claim.” That was not included in regulation No. 109 when the Hassiem case was heard, but all the same, although Hassim lost his case, the hon. the Minister or the Commissioner, whoever it was, saw fit to reframe regulation No. 109 which deals with the privilege to study. This particular privilege is one of the major privileges and prisoners value it very much indeed because it obviously helps them to keep them intellectually occupied and it passes the time of a sentence of imprisonment.

I do not know in which year the new regulations were framed, but they were certainly reframed since 1973. By the way, it would be very helpful if the department could supply the Library of Parliament with a copy of the new regulations as one has the greatest difficulty in obtaining these things from the Library. When one does get them, they are very old and out of date. I should be grateful if the hon. the Minister would see to it that members of Parliament are able to consult these references without having to trouble the department which, of course, is always willing to help. One would, however, like to go to the Library in order to consult these references whenever one likes to.

It is something which the Library should request.

I hope the hon. the Minister will see to it that the request is granted when the Library makes such a request. I have asked the Library to make such a request.

It is the duty of the Library to see to it and not that of the department concerned.

Well, I was given to understand that the departments are supposed to submit these things to the Library. The Library is not to know when regulations are changed. I would have thought that State departments should submit their new sets of regulations as a matter of course to the Library so that they are available to members of Parliament. How does the Library know that the Minister’s department has changed the regulations and that the ones they have are out of date?

Anyway, as I say, we are by no means satisfied that there will be any material alteration made to the clause by virtue of the amendment moved by the hon. member for East London North. I understood him yesterday to say that he was going to move an amendment with the object of omitting the part of the clause which stipulates “notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any law”.

You misunderstood.

It is very likely that I misunderstood. I had seen the other amendment on the Order Paper, but it did not seem to me to cover the objection of putting the Commissioner beyond the law, an objection which the hon. member raised yesterday.

In view of the fact that we do not consider that his amendment makes any material difference whatsoever to the clause, we are going to vote for our amendment and against the clause.

Mr. Chairman, I have been asked by the hon. member for Houghton what difference this amendment makes. Let me assure her here and now that I cannot point to any particular privilege or indulgence at this stage and in connection with which the amendment can make a difference. My knowledge of what privileges and indulgences are granted to prisoners and who may grant them, is perhaps not as full as that of the hon. member. At the same time it is possible that there are certain privileges and indulgences which may be granted by courts of law and, in fact, even by Parliament. If not now, then perhaps at some stage in the future. I think that what my amendment makes absolutely clear—and I think this is important because the hon. member is always talking about where South Africa stands in the eyes of the world …

Not always.

All right, not always, but she is often talking about where South Africa’s image stands in the eyes of the world.

You cannot win, I am telling you now!

I refer to the hon. the Minister’s greater experience. I believe, in fact, that this does make it clear that we are not seeking to put the Commissioner of Prisons above the law and that the only privileges he can take away unilaterally are privileges that he grants unilaterally. This being the case, I tend to the viewpoint that this could be an improvement in the legislation, an improvement as far as prisoners are concerned.

[Inaudible.]

No, I should like the hon. member to listen to my argument on this.

I will.

If the Commissioner knows that a privilege which he has easily granted he can as easily take away, I believe that this would make it easier for him to grant that privilege or indulgence in the first place. If he knows that he has to go through all kinds of procedures in order to withdraw a privilege which he has granted, he would perhaps not grant that privilege in the first place because the problem of taking it away again could, in fact, be of such magnitude that it would not be worth granting the privilege in the first place. I believe that this amendment would make it easier for him to grant privileges and indulgences. He would be able to give the prisoners these privileges and indulgences, knowing that if they were abused …

He always could.

The hon. member for Houghton says he always could. Right. This is the last point I want to make because she has quoted the Hassim case on a number of occasions during this debate, and her contention is that this amendment does not change the law.

But it does not.

Her contention is that all that it is doing is to alter case law and to put it into an Act of Parliament.

That is right.

That being the case …

It would stop any more cases.

… if the amendment which the hon. the Minister seeks to introduce is, of course, refused, the position does not alter at all. I should like her to think about that situation at this stage.

Mr. Chairman, while the hon. member for Houghton was speaking for the second time, it was noticeably sultry here. She said only two things. She differed with the hon. member for East London North. It happens so rarely of course, but I do want to tell the hon. member for Houghton that I almost feel like agreeing with her. With this amendment of his, the hon. member for East London North makes me think of a man who is afraid that his pants might fall down and therefore wears a belt and braces, too. The position is very clear in the clause as it reads. Out of the kindness of his heart the hon. the Minister has decided that it can be accepted, and therefore I want to leave the matter at that.

The hon. member for Johannesburg North spoke for eight minutes, and during those eight minutes he spoke only about a right of review, on which my hon. colleague has replied to him. There is, however, something which troubles me about the manner in which that hon. member said at the end that we should weigh up the value of this clause against the harm which it could do. I find it scandalous that a former senior member of the Bar of South Africa rises to his feet here and tells the world: See what the Parliament of South Africa is doing! It is now removing rights and privileges which ought to remain. It is that hon. member which is in fact sending this venom out into the world. It makes me think that former judges and old women no longer belong in Parliament.

The last argument of the hon. member for Houghton was that this was concerned with the withdrawal of study facilities. But does the hon. member for Houghton really think that the head of a prison derives pleasure from telling a person that he may no longer study? Surely that hon. member has studied herself, and so have I. I know how difficult it is. If a man wants to sweat, let him sweat. Why would the head of a prison without good reason say to a person: “You may no longer use the library; you may no longer enrol for a course?” Would he do that just because he derives a little pleasure from seeing that other people remain ignorant and illiterate? What the hon. member will not understand or concede, is that she is pleading for criminals. They are not voters of hers; they are not people who can vote for her or make any contribution in her favour.

How do you know?

They are criminals. They are the people whom this is concerned with. We are trying to uplift those people but the hon. member simply wants to convert every privilege into a right. If one merely looks at a criminal, one has assaulted him. I think the hon. member and her party ought to realize by now that it is a futile attempt to amend this clause. She ought to withdraw her amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to get involved in a long argument with the hon. member for Pretoria Central.

Pretoria East.

Yes, the hon. member for Pretoria East. I beg the member for Pretoria Central’s pardon. I just want to remind the hon. member for Pretoria East that history has shown that over the years there has often been a reversal of fortunes as a result of which people who were free ended up in gaol and people who were in gaol ended up in power. Therefore, maybe he ought not to be quite so …

Are you scheming?

Oh no, I do not have the power—I will not even say “unfortunately”. I am just reminding the hon. member of history. Maybe it is quite a good thing to show what I would call a little understanding and compassion for prisoners who are, without a doubt, society’s most helpless people. I am not now talking about ordinary convicts, but about any sort of prisoners. In this country there are various kinds of prisoners and all of them fall under regulations by virtue of their being in prison. Not all of them are convicted persons; quite a large number of people are being held without trial.

There is a reason for that.

If, as the hon. member says, there is a reason for it, let them be charged in court. It is because the hon. the Minister knows he does not have a chance of proving anything against them that he has taken these powers to lock people up without trial. All sorts of people are therefore affected by the ability of the man in charge of a prison to grant so-called indulgences and privileges. The men who were held under preventive detention in Modderbee, for instance, fell under the commanding officer of that prison and he granted certain indulgences and so on. So it is not only convicted prisoners we are talking about, but also others.

Even if we were only talking about convicted prisoners, I have to point out to the hon. member that the courts have passed a sentence of imprisonment and that is the punishment. To lock a man up and deprive him of his liberty is the major punishment. Right? Putting him in solitary confinement, depriving him of normal meals and so on are additional punishments which are given to people who in some way or other break the prison regulations. That is the additional punishment they receive in those circumstances. It lies within the power of the man in charge of a prison, the warder or whomever, to grant indulgences. If the hon. member for East London City will look at section 93 …

East London North.

I am sorry. I mean the member for East London North.

Your compass is wrong.

Yes, my compass is pointing in the wrong direction. I am sorry. If the hon. member for East London North would look at section 93 he would see that the power to delegate works right down the line in that reference is made to any member in the prison service.

I did not speak about the delegation of power. The hon. member for Umbilo did.

Oh, then I mean the hon. member for Umbilo.

You are mistaken again.

Well, I do not think that these are relevant mistakes. I do not think it matters much whether I have the constituency right or even the name of the member who asked the question.

It is the same party, I think.

It is the same party and the same question I am replying to. As I have said, that delegation takes place right down the line.

Your apology is accepted.

Thank you. I am always grateful to people for accepting apologies.

As I have said, the hon. the Minister must please try to explain why, since he has amended regulation 109 which makes it eminently clear that these are indulgences which can be withdrawn at the will of the commissioner or whatever official granted them in the first instance, he now comes along with this far-reaching addition of section 22(2)(b) in clause 4. We should like to have an explanation on that.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton has now tried to make out that on this side of the House there is only callousness towards prisoners. Surely that was the impression which the hon. member tried to create here. The hon. member tried to unfurl her little wings to show what a sacred little angel she really is. But what that hon. member did not say, was that almost all of those prisoners whom she in fact knows were locked up for subversion. It is those who have become a danger to the security of the State. I challenge that hon. member to say how many ordinary prisoners …

Order! No, I think the hon. member has now deviated very far from the clause.

Mr. Chairman, let me approach the clause in a different way. This specific clause is aimed at facilitating the administration of the Prisons Service and making it more streamlined. For that reason it cannot be said that if one reads the new section 22 of the Act in conjunction with regulation 103, the prisoner in a prison in South Africa has not all the rights in the world, even to make representations in respect of privileges which have been withdrawn. But the hon. member finds it convenient not to refer to that, but to be oblivious to everything but that which she wants to profess to the outside world, namely that it is only the Progrefs who are concerned about prisoners, whilst the party that makes the laws, are the callous ones. I think that picture must be put right. Surely the hon. member knows that the prisoners in our prisons are sometimes even treated with compassion. But that hon. member pays more than ten visits to political prisoners for every single visit which she pays to other prisoners—if she ever sees them and if she even knows about them. That hon. member also knows exactly in what prisons the political prisoners are being confined, because it is reflected in the questions which she puts in the House. Therefore that hon. member ought not to send this false image of the department and of the new clause out into the world.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to tell the hon. member for Houghton that I can understand that she would want to insult me and in fact does so when she says that my feelings for the people who are in prison are not fair. I think, however, that she is doing the Department of Prisons a very great injustice when she also includes the officials in the criticism which she levels at me personally. She always professes to be the great humanist here. But I want to assure her that she does not have a quarter of the compassion for prisoners that those people who have to look after those prisoners. I want to assure her that her whole approach is wrong. The warder in whose care a prisoner has been placed, is not the enemy of that prisoner. He is not a man who stands in confrontation with a prisoner. The hon. member for Houghton thinks that all the heroes have landed in prison, that all the hooligans are their warders and that these groups confront each other. That is simply not the case, but it is the attitude of the hon. member for Houghton.

It is not true!

It is a fact. That hon. member regards the men in uniform as the enemies of the prisoner, but that is simply not the case. Not only do these people have to coexist, but the warder must also try to make life easier for the prisoners. I think the hon. member for East London North had a very good argument when he said that if the privileges and indulgences were to be a constant bone of contention between the warder and the prisoner, the ultimate result would be that, because the warder is only human after all, he would rather grant no indulgences at all. That will be the result, because he knows that those indulgences are merely going to become a bone of contention.

[Inaudible.]

Can you not understand what I am saying?

I said: Why should that be so?

Surely the hon. member can think for herself why it is so. She says there ought to be a hearing in the prison. There are court cases on this as well. If it constantly gives rise to disputes, it is only human that a person will say: “No, I would rather not give it to that type of man, because he is going to make an issue of it. He is going to use a lot of attorneys and advocates against me on this matter.” I say it is only human to do that. It is far better if, as is in fact being provided in the Bill, there is a clear distinction between rights of a prisoner, and privileges and indulgences.

Sir, now I want to tell the hon. member something, and she may or may not believe it; it does not concern me. When it comes to the rights of people and the defence of the rights of people, I do not take a back seat to the hon. member. I want to make that very clear to her.

You have always disguised it very heavily.

No, I do not. You cannot see it because you are blind and you do not want to open your eyes. That is the trouble, Sir. The hon. members do not want to see when justice is actually justice and when it is not justice. If justice flows from an Act, it is injustice in their eyes. That is the trouble, Mr. Chairman.

Your record speaks for itself.

It does not. You can go and have a look at my record.

We have looked at your record.

My record stands for anybody to see. [Interjections.] I can tell hon. members what we can have a look at. We can go and have a look at their record and see why it has now come about that we consider certain members of the other party a danger to this country.

Is that so? Name them!

Yes. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, is the hon. the Minister entitled to use such language about other members in this House?

He was not speaking about members in the House.

He was, Sir.

I have given my ruling.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of information: The hon. the Minister, according to my ears at least, referred to certain members in this party.

Members of the party, not members in this House.

The hon. the Minister referred to certain members of the party and not to members in this House. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, may we ask the hon. the Minister exactly what he meant when he said “members”, because the word is open to a double interpretation.

Mr. Chairman, in any case, I used the word “considered”. I did not say that they were. [Interjections.] I said that certain members on our side considered certain members on the other side in their party to be a danger to the country.

I challenge you to mention their names.

You challenge me? You must be careful; I mentioned a name once. I once read out a record here.

We do not really care what you think.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: I think that the hon. the Minister has once again insinuated, and in fact more than insinuated, that he was referring to members in this House. If he was not referring to members in this House, why then does he make that accusation now? I should like him to withdraw that, Sir.

Is the hon. the Minister referring to members in the House?

Mr. Chairman, I referred to how we regard those on the opposite side; whether they are in this House now and whether they are in the party, does not matter. I was talking about their party.

The hon. the Minister may proceed.

Sir, I want to repeat: I do not take a back seat to the hon. member for Houghton when it comes to the rights of a prisoner. I would be the first person to stand up for their rights. But when it comes to discipline in a prison and the rehabilitation of a prisoner, then I say that the Commissioner must have the opportunity to grant certain privileges and indulgences at each individual prison and to each individual prisoner. He must be able to grant these as something which a man can aspire to so that the relationship between him and his warder may improve and so that his position in the prison may be made bearable for him. I agree with the hon. member for Houghton that it is most certainly not pleasant for a person to go to prison, regardless of what he has done. Personally, I feel sorry for every person who goes to prison. I feel sorry for a man who has been guilty of an offence of such a nature that the court must send him to prison. I want to place it on record that I personally do everything in my power to make a person’s position in a prison more bearable for him.

What about the ones you lock up without taking them to court?

I do not want to quote examples today, but let me tell the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Musgrave who has now returned to the House after a number of years, that they can go and check the record of what I try to do to make the position of prisoners in prisons bearable. They can go and talk to the family and friends of prisoners outside and then find out what my department tries to do to make the position of the people in the prison more bearable. If the hon. member had done that she would not have made such scandalous statements here in the House. The hon. member must pardon me for that altercation we had in this House, but I want to tell the hon. members that I did not start that argument. The hon. members on the other side started the argument. I was quite prepared to conduct the debate at a high level, but if the hon. members want to make personal insults, they cannot expect me to sit still.

You started it during the Second Reading debate.

What are these privileges which were referred to? The hon. member has asked why the privileges are referred to in the Bill, since they are already contained in the regulations. The hon. member must ask the hon. member for Johannesburg North about that. The legal approach to a regulation differs from the approach to an Act. It must be made quite clear that there are rights of prisoners which a commissioner may not violate. Those are the rights to which the prisoner is entitled and which I shall defend with everything at my disposal, and if I am no longer able to defend them, the courts can intervene. The indulgences of a prisoner will lose their purpose entirely if they are converted into rights. Indulgences are an internal administrative arrangement between the warder and the prisoner.

I want to tell the hon. member for Umbilo to what extent we delegate the duties in connection with indulgences. They are delegated to the level of the commanding officer of a prison. There are good reasons why this is not carried further, for there are different types of prisons for different types of prisoners and it is essential for the commanding officer of a prison to grant indulgences in accordance with his type of prison. Sometimes the prisoners are psychopaths, sometimes it is another type of prisoner and sometimes regard must be had to individuals when indulgences are granted. The whole idea is that the regulation of the administration of a prison—for the sake of the prisoners, because it concerns them—must be such that the most benefit must be derived from it. I find the criticism by the Opposition absolutely unsavoury. It is criticism which will in fact go overseas. One of the hon. members on this side of the House has correctly stated that the Opposition always blows up and misinterprets legislation.

We in South Africa cannot arrange our lives according to the views of the outside world. Theirs is a view which is formed from the information supplied to them from the Opposition benches. The hon. members may object if they like, but I allege that the Opposition always gives a different interpretation to the conduct of the Government than is actually intended.

Your attitude speaks for itself.

Yes, I understand that, but so does that hon. member’s attitude. It is no use, we can never win over the hon. member for Houghton. [Interjections.]

May I just point out the following to the Committee? We are now talking about the prisoner who objects to having been deprived of his privilege.

† Regulation 103 reads—

The prison authority must see the prisoners every day and listen to their complaints, which may appertain to privileges or these indulgences we are talking about. He must try to find out what the difficulty is, why the indulgence has been withdrawn and what has happened.

You are taking it too far.

Why am I taking it too far?

Have you not seen how they ask whether there are any complaints?

I want to tell the hon. member that I have seen it more times than he has. Paragraph (2) of regulation 103 reads—

So, it has to be forwarded to the commanding officer. The hon. member asks whether I have heard how staff members of the prisons speak to the prisoners. I wonder whether the hon. member for Sandton has seen how these prisoners speak to the warders. Has he taken that into account? Does he know that an action results in a reaction and that when a prisoner speaks decently to a warder he will be decently spoken to? It is as simple as that. The warder is not in prison, but the prisoner is. The warder is in prison because of his job he has to do. He has no option. If he is shouted and sworn at by a prisoner, does the hon. member think that there will be no reaction from the warder? The warder is only a human being trying to do his job. [Interjections.] Exactly, this is what this whole Bill is all about. What is the Official Opposition’s complaint? They say that these rights already exist. But if this is so, why are they opposing the Bill? The hon. member for Johannesburg North has said that they have all these rights. Why then oppose it? If we think that this would improve the situation and they think that they have these rights, let it then be as it is and let us improve the situation and they think that they have these rights, let it then be as it is and let us improve the situation.

This brings me to the amendment of the hon. member for East London North. The hon. member for Houghton really raised the same point and I want to tell her why she did it.

I should like to know.

She did not raise it merely because she wanted a reason.

Then do not bother to tell me.

She did it because she was annoyed that the amendment of the NRP had been accepted.

[Inaudible.]

She was annoyed because that amendment had been accepted and that hers could not be accepted.

Why do you not behave like a Minister instead of like a schoolboy?

That is the reason why she shot up and demanded to be told what the difference was. I shall tell her what the difference is. Yesterday I told the hon. member for East London North quite clearly that I did not think that his amendment would do much to the Bill, but that if he thought it would achieve what he had indicated, I would accept it. That is why I am accepting his amendment. I am still in agreement with the hon. member for Pretoria East. I do not think the amendment would actually change the Bill very much, but it satisfies the hon. member for East London North and me too.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

No. Sit down! I may tell the hon. member it also satisfies me because the Bill is now exactly as we need it. It really points to those privileges we are talking about. The hon. member for East London North did not go any further than that. He told me that he wanted to be absolutely sure that this portion about the non-hearing referred to those particular things the Commissioner can grant in terms of subsection (2)(a). I said that that was fair enough and that it was, in fact, my intention. The hon. member for East London North then said that if that was the intention, I should accept his amendment. That is why I am accepting it. It makes the meaning doubly clear as far as I am concerned. [Interjections.] Those hon. members are shouting because they are annoyed about the amendment.

Tell us the difference.

I do not think any other questions were put, and I think I have now tried to explain the essence of the Bill as far as clause 4 is concerned.

Mr. Chairman, this clause refers to section 25 which deals with the inspection of prisons. Section 25(3) deals with the inspection of police lock-ups by commissioned officers of the Prisons Department. It has been explained earlier in this debate that the inspection of certain police lock-ups has become impractical and that, accordingly, this provision is being withdrawn.

However, although we understand the reasons of the hon. the Minister, it is the feeling of hon. members in these benches that the holding of prisoners in prisons or lock-ups is in fact the responsibility of the Department of Prisons. We believe that the conditions of prisoners fall within the particular expertise of the Department of Prisons and that the Department of Police, even over short periods, is not as well qualified as the Department of Prisons to deal with the aspect of detaining prisoners in lock-ups or in prisons. Therefore, despite the difficulties which the hon. the Minister has, we feel that—as far as the inspection of such lock-ups is concerned—the periodical inspection of police lock-ups by properly qualified prison officials is desirable and correct and should be retained. Accordingly, we cannot support clause 5 of the Bill.

Mr. Chairman, it is very obvious that the hon. member for Sandton does not feel very strongly about the amendment which he has proposed. The reasons are of course understandable. I think the hon. member for Sandton was being a bit hasty when he proposed the amendment. That is why there was not much fervour in his presentation.

It is necessary to trace the origin of this provision. When we look at section 28 of the Prisons Act—Act No. 8 of 1955—we find that it specifies what types of prisoners will from time to time be detained in police cells. In terms of section 28 these types of prisoners are divided into two categories, as follows—

1. (a) any person sentenced in a district where no prison has been established or at a place where no prison exists; and
2. (b) any prisoner who, under the authority of the Commissioner, is temporarily removed to a police cell or lock-up.

We often encounter prisoners falling under the second category; prisoners falling under the first category, we do not perhaps encounter so frequently. We can, however, visualize the situation where a court case is heard at a small place, e.g. Lutzville. There is no prison at Lutzville. A prisoner who has to appear in court at Lutzville may be imprisoned at, say, Piketberg. That prisoner must therefore be brought from Piketberg to Lutzville for his appearance in court. If the court case lasts longer than a day, the prisoner involved must necessarily be detained in the police cells at Lutzville. Such a prisoner therefore falls under the second category to which reference is made in section 28 of the principal Act.

What type of prisoner falls under the first category, therefore? Let us assume that a person has been sentenced in the magistrate’s court at Lutzville to imprisonment for a period of two or three days. That means that he must be sent to the prison nearest Lutzville. Let us again assume that it is the prison at Piketberg. If the prisoner involved is now detained in the police cells at Lutzville, it means that somebody of the Department of Prisons must be sent to Lutzville to inspect the police cells there. That is something which is totally impracticable. It is in any case a system which has virtually fallen into disuse. For that reason it is now being proposed in this Bill that that provision be deleted. The hon. member for Sandton said that his real reason for proposing that was that he believed the prisons officials to be the experts as far as prisoners are concerned. That is why he wants them to go and inspect the cells. Sir, I do not think that we should display that lack of confidence in the police’s own inspections. The prisoners and the cells are indeed inspected by the police from time to time. That is the normal practice and I think the hon. member for Sandton, who is himself a legal practitioner, is aware of that. Therefore I do not believe that we should insist that there should necessarily be inspections by officials of the Department of Prisons. We should be content to trust the police, and where prisoners are detained for brief periods, the police can themselves carry out those routine inspections.

Mr. Chairman, before I discuss on the inherent merits or otherwise of this motion for deletion, there is another matter to which I should like to refer briefly. In his reply to the Second Reading debate the hon. the Minister lectured me about the danger or the undesirability of dragging the names of officials into a debate in this House. There cannot be any difference of opinion about that, for reasons given by the hon. the Minister himself, namely that the officials are not in a position to reply, and that in any case it is undesirable to drag the officials of the State into a dispute. My problem in this case is that the hon. the Minister implied that I had dragged an official or a department into a dispute and that I ought not to have done it. However, I did not do it by any means. The hon. the Minister asked me …

I made the point that you should not mention the officials, regardless of whether they were for or against the argument.

Order! I think the hon. member should rather come back to the clause. He can raise that point again in the Third Reading.

As it may please you, Sir. I think I have said what I wanted to say. [Interjections.]

Regarding the merits of this proposal, it is of course clear that a principle is involved. It is true that it may be administratively difficult for the department to give effect to the directions in the existing section, but this is not necessarily a good reason for sacrificing a principle.

That principle is that all sentenced prisoners are under the control, the inspection and the care of the Department of Prisons. That is the principle which is being tampered with here. In our view it is not sufficient to change the principle for the sake of administrative convenience. If the department does not have the officials or officers to carry out this inspection at a given time, then the necessity or the duty to do it falls away. No one in the world would say that the Department of Prisons should do something which is impossible. This is the same wrong approach which we had in the case of clause 4, namely an intimation of an attitude or a direction which is a deviation from a principle without there being, in my humble view at least, sufficient reason for doing it. Therefore I express the view on behalf of my party that we made a mistake in compromising a principle for the sake of a small correction and a method of simplifying a procedure. Therefore I support the proposal by the hon. member for Sandton that this provision should be deleted.

Mr. Chairman, I rise merely to say that in reality I replied fully to this fundamental objection yesterday. I cannot see the difference between a police inspection in connection with unsentenced prisoners and one in connection with sentenced prisoners in police cells. If police inspection, according to the hon. member for Johannesburg North, must take place and is satisfactory in respect of unsentenced prisoners, what difference is there then between that of unsentenced and short-term sentenced prisoners? If police inspection is good enough for one, then it must surely be good enough for the other as well, and that is all that we said here. We asked why we should duplicate departmental work and send people from the prison service to go and look at or inspect the cells of another department. Surely the hon. member for Johannesburg North implied that he was satisfied that that department’s officials, the policemen, could do inspections in respect of unsentenced prisoners. In other words, it is a totally unpractical arrangement to send the officials of the Department of Prisons to police cells when the police themselves are altogether competent to do the same work. That is all we are concerned with. We are not concerned with anything else. The hon. member for Johannesburg North referred to attitude, but there is also a certain hidden attitude in the words of the hon. member for Johannesburg North. He simply does not find a policeman satisfactory for an inspection of that nature. But we cannot agree with that principle. We say that if prisons officials can do inspections in prisons, police officials can do inspections in their own cells. It is as simple as that. That is the reason why this section should be deleted.

Mr. Chairman, I want the hon. the Minister to please consider the following. The basic reason why it is felt that a member of a commissioned officer of the Prisons Department should, in fact, from time to time keep an eye on police lock-ups is because prisoners once they are prisoners— and particularly sentenced prisoners—are the responsibility of the Department of Prisons. What is involved here is their welfare, their indulgences and privileges, which have been discussed, and all kinds of matters relating to those prisoners. It is not only a question of whether the cells have been painted out or not. It is therefore our feeling that the Department of Prisons, which has a special expertise in relation to prisoners, should not abdicate its responsibility in regard to prisoners who are temporarily in the hands of police in police lock-ups. That is the point.

Mr. Chairman, the objection which we have to the present wording of clause 7 has already been mentioned during the Second Reading debate, but the hon. the Minister did not reply to it. Therefore, I shall repeat briefly what the objection is. Up to now there has not yet been a case where a person sentenced in the Republic, i.e. someone who is sentenced by a court in the South African Republic, has had to serve his sentence outside the borders of the Republic, i.e. in a foreign State. However, according to the way in which the legislation is worded, it entails the principle that a person who is sentenced by a court in the Republic of South Africa, will have to serve his sentence outside this State.

I mentioned in the Second Reading debate that the hon. the Minister spoke about short-term prisoners during his Second Reading speech, but there is no indication in the proposed legislation that it is confined to short-term prisoners. I gave the extreme example of someone who could have a sentence of life imprisonment imposed on him by a court in the Republic and who might then serve that sentence in another State. I added that that was unlikely; once again it is a question of the principle involved. Our objection was emphasized and endorsed by the fact that the hon. the Minister did not consider it worthwhile to react to it in his reply to the Second Reading.

He did so yesterday afternoon.

That is why we are repeating our objection, viz. that there is a principle involved here which cannot be accounted for. The hon. the Minister referred to detainees while I am referring to prisoners who are sentenced by a court in South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, I am just rising to ask the hon. member whether he was in the House yesterday afternoon.

The answer is “yes”, so you can sit down. [Interjections.]

If the hon. member had been here, he would have heard that the hon. the Minister dealt fully with this aspect.

He did not.

The hon. member would do well to read the hon. the Minister’s speech.

Mr. Chairman, I agree with the hon. member for Aliwal. I did in fact reply to it in full. In reply to the Second Reading debate yesterday afternoon, I dealt with similar cases. Since the hon. member for Johannesburg North apparently did not hear or did not understand, I shall repeat it If the hon. member takes a look at the clause, he will see that it can take place by agreement only. It can only take place if an agreement is concluded between the Republic of South Africa and the other State. I explained to the hon. member what the position is, regardless of whether it concerns a prisoner who has been sentenced or one who has not. Let us take the perfect example of Bophuthatswana which is situated close to the capital of the Republic, but which also comprises an extremely extensive territory. Unfortunately, Bophuthatswana has only one prison at the moment, and it is situated very far from Pretoria. All that happens, is that an international agreement is concluded and that, even if we were to sentence a Tswana in the Republic, it would be better for us, if possible, to transfer him to Bophuthatswana to serve his sentence there.

And if he is not a Tswana?

Of course, this can almost never happen because we are the ones who have a large number of prisons, not them.

“Almost never!”

How can one exclude those cases? As I said, it is done by means of an agreement. There is an agreement between them and us, and since it is a developing country, we must provide for their prisoners who are sentenced here and even for those who are sentenced there but whom they cannot accommodate in their prison, so that they can serve their sentence in our prisons. Yesterday I said that it was a practical arrangement and an agreement which we conclude with a developing State in order to help that State to get its prisons administration off the ground, until they reach the stage where the agreement is no longer necessary. There is nothing else behind this. I do not know why the hon. member for Johannesburg North is making such a tremendous fuss about this specific point. There is no question of us transferring our prisoners to their prison as long as we have enough space in our own prisons. I assume that the same holds good for them. However, if it should become necessary in practice for us or them to make use of one another’s prisons, we have this mutual agreement in order to be able to do so.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 8:

Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

The clause proposes to amend the Act by reducing the number of strokes from ten to seven. I appreciate the hon. the Minister’s explanation for this given during the Second Reading. He pointed out that the maximum number of strokes that can be given for any one sentence is seven as provided for in the Criminal Procedure Act. He said further that he did not accept the recommendation made by the Viljoen Commission that the maximum number of strokes to be given at any one time should be five. Unfortunately he did not accept that. I understand that, but I am trying to encourage the whole tendency, as far as punishment is concerned, away from corporal punishment. The hon. the Minister will be aware that when the Criminal Procedure Act was under discussion I tried to move for the exclusion of corporal punishment entirely as one of the punishments to be given for an offence. I know that is not what the Viljoen Commission recommended, but it is a matter which I feel very strongly about. I believe we should move in the same direction as other civilized countries which have abolished corporal punishment. In Britain this was done 30 years ago following an in-depth investigation by the Cadogan Commission, which indeed found that the only effect of whipping was to brutalize and that it had no deterrent effect whatsoever. I might say that judges in our country have also come to the conclusion that whipping is not a good form of punishment. An article was published in NICRO by Dr. Midgeley, who has done a lot of work as a criminologist, and he found that just on 50% of people who have had corporal punishment inflicted on them, were back again after committing certain offences. In other words the recidivism is very high indeed amongst people who have had corporal punishment inflicted on them.

The hon. member for Aliwal of course put forward a passionate plea the other day to increase the number of strokes.

That is what I personally would like to do.

He should then vote against this clause because the hon. the Minister is taking the wrong course of action, according to him. The hon. the Minister is reducing the number of strokes from 10 to seven and if the hon. member were true to his own convictions, he would vote against this clause. However, I am sure he does not have the guts to do it because that would be a black mark against him. Therefore I am sure that he will not follow his own convictions.

I want to explain to hon. members why I made it six strokes and not five. Although five strokes is in accordance with the recommendations of the Viljoen Commission, I would like to make it none at all but I am not competent to do so in terms of the rules of the House because the actual principle of corporal punishment is not being amended here but just the total number of strokes which may be given at any one time. The reason is that there is a subsequent clause in this Bill which the hon. member has obviously missed.

No, I have seen it.

It is impossible therefore to reduce the number of strokes beyond that figure which is not reduced in this Bill. Nevertheless, I would like to move the amendment despite the fact that I appreciate that another Act contains a maximum above that which I propose. There is nothing, however, to stop this hon. Minister, whose powers are manifold, from coming to this House a little later this session with a one-clause amending Bill to amend the Criminal Procedure Act to bring it in line with the amendment that I propose.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton is an impossible one for the simple reason that at present the Criminal Procedure Act provides that a maximum of seven strokes may be imposed. As far as the Criminal Procedure Act is concerned, it deals with imposing the punishment, while the Prisons Act deals with the infliction of punishment. An untenable situation arises if, on the one hand, one is authorized to inflict seven strokes while another person or body may impose ten strokes. That is why this Act is merely being brought into line with the Criminal Procedure Act. The amendment by the hon. member for Houghton to change this, puts this legislation out of alignment with the Criminal Procedure Act again. That is why the amendment of the hon. member for Houghton, like many of her other amendments, is completely untenable and cannot be supported.

Mr. Chairman, I am not prepared to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to voice our objections to this clause. We are not in favour of the granting of monetary rewards to people by the Department of Prisons. This is a sort of spy clause and I think it is the sort of clause that can lead to a tremendous amount of abuse. I think one will get all sorts of information being offered in order to obtain the monetary reward and I do not believe it is the sort of thing that should be encouraged. As the provision stands, the Commissioner may pay monetary rewards to persons who have given information on planned escapes. To my mind there is no necessity to broaden this provision to give rewards to any persons giving information of any nature whatsoever. This is not the sort of thing that should be encouraged. There is already far too much violence between prisoners in the prisons in South Africa. Some prisons have bad reputations of, for example, convicts killing one another. This sort of provision can lead to a tremendous amount of internal friction within the prisons themselves and therefore I do not think it should be encouraged.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton is actually attacking an existing Act. As section 49 is embodied in Act 8 of 1959, it does in fact deal with rewards for prisoners if they give information which may lead to the apprehension of escaped prisoners. Therefore, this hon. member is attacking an existing principle. The fact of the matter is that clause 10 is merely an extension of the principle of offering rewards. Subsection (1) of the principal Act provides for monetary rewards to be paid to persons giving information which may lead to the arrest of escaped prisoners. Subsection (2) provides that such person be rewarded, and reimbursed for any reasonable expenses incurred in order to provide the information. These are the provisions of the existing law. Now, in the proposed Amendment Bill, there is a small amplification of the provisions as contained in the principal Act. Clause 10 of the Amendment Bill provides that there shall also be rewards for giving information or performing any act which may further the interests of the department in general. Surely there can be nothing wrong with amplifying the principle to this small extent. However, we are accustomed to getting this type of criticism from the hon. member for Houghton. She attacks the hon. the Minister and the hon. member for Aliwal in an acrimonious way. For the sake of the hon. member for Houghton I want to repeat what I said during the Second Reading: The outside world has a distorted image of our Department of Prisons. Robben Island is spoken of as a penal camp, an Alcatraz, a Devil’s Island, and then this hon. member, who is quoted at an authoritative level against us in periodicals which are distributed abroad, says …

Order! The hon. member must not wander too far abroad. [Interjections.]

In support of clause 10, I want to say that this is also a method of protecting the interests of the Department of Prisons, and the department is prepared to pay money for this. There are enough judges and foreign visitors who visit prisons and there are enough news media which visit the prisons. There is therefore no room for any irregularities. The amplification which is embodied in clause 10 to provide for the remuneration of any person who assists the department in some way or other is a reasonable one and should be accepted.

Mr. Chairman, we in these benches have studied the clause and in the first instance considered it to be one which required further clarity from the hon. the Minister. The hon. the Minister, in introducing the Second Reading, indicated that the purpose of broadening the existing position was that monetary awards could be given to persons who performed highly meritorious service in the opinion of the Commissioner. We would like to know whether the hon. the Minister can give any indication as to what yardstick will be used in considering the highly meritorious service that might be given a monetary reward.

We can see that the Department of Prisons has a tremendously difficult task and that they from time to time have to seek assistance and that they receive assistance from people outside. If this measure is designed to assist the prisons in their functioning and in performing an adequate service as a Prisons Department, and if there are people who are rendering highly meritorious service, it is only right that those persons should receive some monetary reward and some recognition for their service to the department, which in turn renders assistance to the country. Obviously the whole question of prisons is a matter which receives international attention and therefore it is in our interest to see that our penal system meets with the requirements of being fair and just and that it will withstand criticism from outside. For these reasons we do not foresee any great difficulties, but we would like to hear from the hon. the Minister whether he can give some examples of the conditions in which such monetary rewards will be granted to such persons.

Mr. Chairman, I first want to refer to the question asked by the hon. member for Umbilo because the hon. member for Houghton is apparently just seeing this clause from the one side, i.e. the position of the internal informer in the prison. However, there are people on the outside who often help in finding escapees. One gets, for example, a person who uses his own aeroplane or helicopter to go into bushy country to find a very dangerous person. That is extremely meritorious service to the department. At the moment we are not covered and we are not able to give such a person a reward, and this clause will allow the department to give its dues to people who give this sort of service to the department.

I would also like to remind the hon. member for Houghton that when an escape is planned in a prison, it is usually planned by people who can be very dangerous to the public. One of the ways in which the department can find out about the plans of such an escape is by informers.

But you have a provision on that already.

Maybe we have such a provision already, but the clause is extending the provision and making the section better than it was. It will enable us to pay compensation also to people outside the prison service and outside the prison as such, for example, to ordinary farmers who help us with dogs, or people who use their motor cars, aeroplanes or helicopters to help in searching for people who have escaped. We have even had a case where somebody worked out a patent for us which helped us in our administration. That is the sort of service that we would like to give dues to and that is what the clause is all about.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister whether one can frame an amendment which would make it clear that he is referring to persons outside the prisons? Would the hon. the Minister be prepared to accept such an amendment?

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member is now putting the accent only on the other side. I am referring to anybody who renders this service in any manner or means and who is in that way of help to the department. It obviously also applied to people who are prepared to inform us about the activities of other convicted prisoners. This is one of the things which is entailed in this clause, but the provision also entails people who help the public by bringing in people who have escaped from prison and who are dangerous to the public. That is what the clause is all about. It covers all the cases which the hon. member for Umbilo had in mind. That is why I said that the hon. member for Houghton is only stressing the one side. The clause entails more than that.

Mr. Chairman, may I just ask the hon. the Minister whether it is not possible to separate the meaning of this clause so that the facility which he requires, i.e. to be able to remunerate people outside the prisons who assist the department, remains, while stressing that if he receives help from within the prison the correct procedure is not to pay money, but rather to grant further privileges or remission of sentence? Is it not possible to separate the meaning of this provision so as to provide for that, rather than to extend a system whereby money becomes a factor in regard to all informing within a prison?

Mr. Chairman, I am not prepared to accept the suggestion. I think the clause covers the whole aspect.

Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

Section 54 of the Act deals with trials conducted by commissioned officers of contraventions of regulations by prisoners. One of the powers of such a court after a trial has been held, would be “the deprivation of all privileges, gratuities or, indulgences for a period not exceeding one month.” If we take into account the debate that was held somewhat acrimoniously earlier this morning, the question arises as to why it is necessary to delete the provision concerning the power to utilize this form of sentence. It seems to me that it very clearly links with clause 4 of the Bill in terms of which the Commissioner, without there being any hearing whatsoever, is entitled to withdraw privileges. It takes that out now. Having passed clause 4, we have a situation that that particular punishment is withdrawn from the powers of a commissioned officer in the trial of a prisoner. We feel it is the correct and proper sentence which could be passed in the case of a misdemeanour and that if a prisoner has been convicted of some breach of regulation within a prison it should be within a power of the trial court to utilize that form of sentence.

Mr. Chairman, obviously I cannot accept the proposed amendment. The reason for that is that we want to eliminate this kind of concession as being a right. It is no longer a right but purely a concession by the Commissioner and may automatically be withdrawn. It does not become part of the court case. In other words to bring it into line with the principle of clause 4, it was necessary to delete subsection (2)(b) of section 54.

Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

This is obviously again an attempt to reduce the incidence and the severity of the old corporal punishment principle by reducing the maximum age at which a person may be whipped. I know the Viljoen Commission recommended a maximum age of 40 years in the case of a convicted prisoner—that is what this particular clause applies to. I also know it recommended a maximum age of 30 years at which the courts can impose that sentence on somebody who is not in prison. In moving this amendment I am not completely out of line with the thinking of the Viljoen Commission, although, as I have said, it was prepared to extend the age limit to 40 years in the case of prisoners who have committed offences under the actual prison regulations. But, as I say, it is again simply an attempt to reduce the whole principle of corporal punishment being applied in this country.

I am not prepared to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment which has been moved by the hon. member for Houghton, endeavours to amend the clause which deals with persons who are liable to receive strokes, to the extent that it shall be persons under the age of 30, whereas the hon. the Minister’s amendment deals with persons under the age of 40, as far as punishment is concerned. We in these benches believe that corporal punishment is a punishment which is necessary from time to time, but we do believe that corporal punishment should be restricted to juveniles, persons under 21 years of age. However, the amendment which is before us is, as the hon. the Minister indicated in the Second Reading debate, in line with the recommendations of the Viljoen Commission’s report, where prisoners who are guilty of committing an offence in terms of the regulations would receive corporal punishment if they are under the age of 40 years. The hon. the Minister has indicated that he accepts that recommendation. However, the recommendation, although it does not deal specifically with the prisoner who has committed a misdemeanour, also indicates that in the case of adult males the age limit should be 30 years. There is therefore the recommendation as far as limiting it to 30 years is concerned. However, the commission also points out that, following strong recommendations from the Department of Prisons, there are cases where persons over the age of 30 years might benefit from corporal punishment and should, perhaps in view of their aggressive nature, therefore also receive corporal punishment. However, as I have already indicated, we should like to see corporal punishment being limited to persons who are juveniles. The amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton endeavours to reduce the age from 40 to 30 years. If one looks at the report of the Commissioner of Prisons, one can see that the number of prisoners in the age group below 30 years constitutes the greatest proportion of prisoners, and those between the age of 21 and 29 years, according to the graph on page 8 of the Commissioner’s report, to be by far the greatest proportion. Therefore it would affect a considerable number of prisoners by virtue of the fact that the majority of them are below the age of 30, when one takes into account that those between the age of 19 and 20 years and those who are under the age of 30 constitute the greatest proportion of prisoners. Therefore, by restricting it to the age of 30 it would not necessitate a change to any great degree if the other recommendation of the Viljoen Commission—that corporal punishment should be restricted to persons under the age of 30—is accepted. For these reasons we in these benches intend supporting the amendment of the hon. member for Houghton.

Mr. Chairman, I am a bit disappointed with the attitude which the hon. member for Umbilo has taken up, i.e. that corporal punishment should be confined to juveniles. After all, the matter was examined very carefully by the Viljoen Commission. It was an in-depth study and a lot of evidence was led in regard to the matter. Hon. members will see very clearly on page 137 of that report that it was found that there are reasons for differentiating between prisoners and ordinary offenders. This is demonstrated to be the case from a memorandum submitted by the Commissioner of Prisons.

The hon. member for Houghton likes to produce evidence from criminologists and other people, but to me it is important that we should look at the attitude and the relationship between the criminal himself and the Department of Prisons. As soon as a sentence has been passed, on him he is handed over to the Department of Prisons which is then responsible for him. If one looks at the report and the evidence which the Department of Prisons submitted, one will see very clearly that the department had been alarmed at the situation which had developed because prisoners of more than 30 years of age were not subject to corporal punishment. They also state very clearly in the report, as the hon. member for Umbilo correctly pointed out, that it will be found that a minimal number of people above the age of 30 years receive corporal punishment. This is adequate proof to me that the Department of Prisons is acting in a particularly responsible manner in this regard.

Now I am asking the question: Since we have that proof, why should the Department of Prisons be hampered if their actions have shown that they are after all acting in the interests of the prisoners and in the interests, above all, of discipline in prisons. It is quite clear that there are obdurate and aggressive prisoners for whom no other kind of punishment but corporal punishment will help. That is the reason why we on this side of the House decided to reduce the age limit in this case from 50 to 40 years. We are convinced that that is adequate and that we should be satisfied with that.

Mr. Chairman, I am not prepared to accept the amendment that was moved. I gave adequate reasons for not doing so in my reply to the Second Reading debate. Therefore, I adhere to that.

Mr. Chairman, we have given notice that we shall vote against this clause although I have already dwelt on this question during the Second Reading debate, I shall briefly reiterate my reasons for opposing it. Since we do not want to lose ourselves again in technical arguments over rights, privileges and obligations, I just want to say that in this case I feel that all that is involved here is the question of labour. It is concerned merely with the question of the activity of prisoners while in detention. Labour is extremely important as a therapy— both physically and mentally. The general purport of the Prisons Act states this too. I feel that this clause is an infringement of the right of prisoners to perform labour when they are physically capable of doing so.

One of the judgements which has already been referred to in this debate, is the one in the case of Hassim. In his judgment the learned judge said—

The hon. the Minister found it difficult to determine what I mean when I draw a distinction between the prisoner in segregation—complete segregation—and a prisoner who is serving a sentence of solitary confinement. Nor can the hon. the Minister understand why I say that there is a tendency in this clause to blur this distinction. I repeat the statement that this provision displays such a tendency. A prisoner who is completely segregated or isolated—I think the word which the hon. the Minister used was “isolation”—is separated both during his rest periods and work periods. If he is merely isolated, and not totally isolated, he is isolated during his rest period only. If he is isolated in both periods and may not perform labour, he is in the same position as a prisoner who is serving solitary confinement. That is a punishment.

Then he is completely isolated for his rest period and is also totally isolated for the rest of the time, because he has no labour period. Now this right—and in my opinion it is a right—of a prisoner to demand or rely on a labour opportunity is being considered as an obligation in this section, an obligation from which he is being exempted. The proposed new section 78 (2A) reads as follows—

In other words, we have a definite tendency here to regard the performance of labour during detention as a duty on the part of the prisoner. In some cases it would probably be the case, but generally speaking it is clear, in terms of the verdict which I quoted, that it is a privilege too, and actually more than a privilege, a right which the Act gives him. The hon. the Minister announced that in some cases of complete segregation it is administratively very difficult to provide a single prisoner with labour. However, my question to hon. members on the opposite side is: Why is it necessary to amend the section in this way? According to the wording of the proposed new subsection, it now seems as if it is simply a duty which is being abolished and nothing more. Sir, it is not the prisoner who must be exempted from labour; it is the Commissioner who must be exempted from the obligation of providing labour opportunities. That is the difference, and I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether it is not possible, provisionally at least, unless this would give rise to extraordinary administrative problems, preferably to hold this section in abeyance at this stage. If he does this, we will be able to go into it more carefully and it will be possible to test the circumstances against what is good and healthy therapy for the rehabilitation and the preservation of the health of prisoners, both physically and mentally. That is why I propose that we delete this provision.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Johannesburg North is now holding it against me that we have made this change in this specific way. The proposed new subsection reads as follows—

If I understand the hon. member’s argument correctly, he does not want us to say that the prisoner shall be “exempted” from the labour, because this is a right that he has. This is the argument which the hon. member raised. I am sorry that the hon. member does not look at the Act itself when he prepares these matters. If he had done this, he would have found that section 77 of the Act provides that the Commissioner determines certain forms of labour, and that a prisoner shall at all times perform such labour, tasks and other duties as may be assigned to him. He must perform them.

Yes, but that is just the one side …

He is obliged to perform them. Surely I cannot change the Act so that this obligation be considered as a right. Surely I must refer to the exemption of a task which he must do. How else can I word it? Then the hon. member for Johannesburg North comes here, apparently without having read section 77, and simply regards it as a right. If the hon. member had read section 77, he could not have made this speech. [Interjections.] How else can the department formulate the matter than to say that it exempts a person from what he is required to do? Surely it cannot formulate it in any other way. I went further. I explained that in certain circumstances there is sometimes no work to do. According to the hon. member for Johannesburg North, the Commissioner is obliged to provide work, but where must he find it? He must then do something illegal, because he cannot carry it out.

They should write his judgements for him.

That is why we have this amendment, because it must be practical. If there is no labour, the Commissioner must not be held responsible for this, as the hon. member for Johannesburg North now wants.

Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

The effect of the amendment is that subsection (2) of section 15A of the Companies Act of 1973, as proposed by clause 3, is replaced by the new proposed subsection. Section 15A(2), which is proposed to be inserted by clause 3 of the Bill, provides, inter alia, that notwithstanding the provisions of the proposed section 15A(1), a company is not relieved by a prohibition or exemption in terms of the latter section, of the obligation to submit to the Registrar’s office the returns required by the Companies Act. The amendment which I have moved will mean that notwithstanding the provisions of the proposed section 15A(1) of the Companies Act, information which a company has been prohibited from publishing, or in respect of which exemption has been granted to a company, at its own request, from the obligation to publish it in terms of the law, will be provided to the Registrar by the company only when the Registrar requires the company in writing to provide that information. Therefore, in practice, a prohibition on exemption in terms of the proposed section 15A(1) of the Companies Act of 1973 will mean that certain information which must be mentioned in the returns which have to be lodged with the Registrar in terms of the Act will be omitted from such returns or that those returns will not be lodged with the Registrar’s office at all. The procedure proposed in the Bill would therefore have clashed with what happens in practice in respect of the submission of returns to the Registrar. Consequently, provision is being made in the amendment for a procedure which fits in better with the provisions of section 15A(1). This is actually being done in order to give effect to my undertaking to the hon. member for Parktown to rectify matters in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry that the hon. member for Parktown cannot participate in the debate today as a result of the change in the Order Paper. I am also sorry that I have to take over from him at short notice!

Firstly, I want to thank the hon. the Minister for the amendment which he has moved. It removes all our reservations. In the circumstances, we are therefore prepared to support the amendment as well as the clause.

Mr. Chairman, I indicated at the Second Reading of the Bill that there appeared to be two different thoughts that have been adopted in regard to notification of deregistration by post in that in terms of clause 25 an external company has to be notified by certified post whereas an ordinary South African-registered company does not have to have that notification sent by certified post. We believe that in all justice clause 5 should be amended to enable the local company to be notified by certified post. Consequently, I wanted to move the two amendments printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

1. (1) On page 7, in line 28, after “by” to insert “certified”;
2. (2) on page 7, in line 37, after “by” to insert “certified”.

Unfortunately, however, I have been advised that, as this is a dead part of the Bill, these amendments cannot be accepted, despite the fact that the hon. the Minister indicated in his reply to the Second Reading …

Order! I have decided to allow that. The hon. member may continue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In that case I move them formally. I believe it would be of advantage to these companies that they should be notified by certified post. Things can go wrong in the post.

I do not believe that these amendments need very much discussion and consequently I leave it at that.

Mr. Chairman, I submit that the argument of the hon. member is sound in this regard and therefore I am prepared to accept both amendments.

Mr. Chairman, I merely rise to say that the arguments raised by the hon. member for Parktown and the hon. the Minister’s reply thereto have been reconsidered by us. In the light of his explanation we have no further objection and we are able to support this clause.

Mr. Chairman, a point was raised yesterday during the Second Reading debate in regard to the notification of written consent of acceptance by a director which may be required by the Registrar. It was asked whether the request by the Registrar that such information be supplied to him by way of a notice should be dated 14 days before the writing or the receipt of the letter. I think the hon. the Minister undertook to examine whether there would be any technical difficulties in regard to the registration of mail to ensure that there would be proof as to precisely when the letter was dispatched or received or perhaps both dispatched and received. In his reply to the Second Reading yesterday the hon. the Minister indicated that he would investigate the matter. It is not a matter of enormous importance but I would be grateful if he would inform the House whether he has, in fact, seen his way clear to making this improvement.

Mr. Chairman, the issue that was involved was what should be the operative date from when the period of 14 days should be calculated. As the Bill stands at the moment it should be calculated from the date of the letter, whereas it was submitted that it would be better if it were calculated as from the date of receipt of the letter. I am quite prepared to amend this subsection to provide that the words “of the receipt of the letter” should be inserted after the words “after the date”. I accordingly move the following amendment—

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Hon. members will remember that when I moved the Second Reading of the Patents Bill on 2 March this year, I mentioned the technological developments which were the result of the protection that had been and was being afforded by patent rights as far as industrial property are concerned. As far as intellectual property is concerned, similar protection is afforded by granting authors of literary and artistic works certain rights. In this sphere, however, we are dealing with a problem of a somewhat different nature, viz. the fact that modern technological developments have made it virtually impossible to protect copyrights effectively. The present Copyright Act, 1965, which is based to a large extent on a similar British Act of 1956, no longer satisfies the present-day requirements for this particular protection and consequently it became necessary to revise the Act concerned in order to try to protect the rights of authors of literary and artistic works in a more effective manner.

For this purpose an ad hoc committee consisting of representatives of the film industry, record manufacturers, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, organizations which act on behalf of authors, composers, orchestras and publishers, the Association of Law Societies of South Africa, the Bar Council of South Africa and other interested parties, was appointed to consider the problems which flow from the implementation and interpretation of the existing Act and to make recommendations in connection therewith.

In revising the Act the committee also had to consider, of necessity, the provisions of international organizations in the sphere of intellectual property, since South Africa is a member of some of these organizations. The most important organization of this nature is definitely the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic works. The existing Act still contains provisions which are based on the Brussels text of the 1948 Convention. Since then this convention has been revised on two occasions, i.e. in 1967 in Stockholm and again in Paris in 1971. Therefore the Bill had to be adapted to comply with the Paris text. In addition, provision had to be made in the Bill for the utilization of all the concessions the Berne Convention allows. In this regard, as well, the committee had to keep in mind that South Africa was a greater importer of copyright than an exporter. It therefore follows that we do not have to act quite as protectively as in the case of the British legislation on which the present Act is based.

Another convention which had to be taken into consideration in revising the present Act was the Convention for the Protection of Manufacturers of Phonograms. The main object of this convention is the protection of the manufacturers of phonograms against the unauthorized duplication of their phonograms. In case hon. members do not understand what these are, I want to explain that in this case phonograms mean sound recordings. [Interjections.] That hon. member now looks more relieved than he did before I explained that. The most recent, but vitally important organization with regard to the protection of copyright, is the convention which deals with the distribution of programme-carrying signals. The object of this convention is to prevent satellites from distributing programme-carrying signals to organizations for which they are not intended. Although South Africa is not yet a member of this convention, the provisions thereof are of great importance to this country, because it has an earth satellite station and is in communication with one of the Intelsat satellites. South Africa’s interest in this convention is, therefore, active as well as passive, i.e. active when signals are sent from the Republic and passive when signals are received. Consequently the committee also gave attention to the provisions in terms of which South Africa may become a member of this convention should the need arise.

A draft Bill containing the recommendations of the ad hoc committee to which I have referred, was published on 23 January 1978 for general information, and comment from interested parties. As a result of further comment and suggestions received from the interested parties concerned, certain adjustments had to be effected in the published Bill. In formulating the Bill which is being considered here today, an agreement had to be arrived at by various members of the committee because the interests of creators of intellectual property and the users thereof are often irreconcilable and lead to conflict. I think hon. members will agree with me that the Bill is a striking example of constructive co-operation between parties with divergent interests and therefore I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to thank the members of the committee sincerely and to pay great tribute to them for the way in which they reached a consensus in this connection, thus making it possible for them to draw up this Bill.

† I now wish to refer briefly to some of the major new provisions of the Bill. The first new provision is contained in clause 1 and relates to a literary work, which is being defined to include a dramatic work. Definitions are also included in respect of programme-carrying signals and satellites.

A second new provision is that works eligible for copyright are now, for easy reference, listed and it is specifically stated that such works must be new and original and reduced to some material form.

As in all legislation relating to industrial property, provision is now made for the State to be bound by the Act. The Bill also provides for the period of copyright commissioned by the State to be 50 years after the date of publication or the date in which the work was made, depending upon the nature of the work in question.

Furthermore, no copyright protection is given to official texts of a legislative, administrative or legal nature or to the official translations thereof. It is, I submit, in the public interest that such texts should be reproduced without any restrictions whatsoever.

The biggest problem flowing from copyright protection is the ease with which works subject to copyright can these days be reproduced. It is in the field that technological developments have made major advances to facilitate such reproduction. I may merely mention the current extensive use of photocopying machines, tape recorders, including tape recorders built into radio-receiving apparatus, as well as the latest developments in video-recording. These facilities represent the source of virtually all complaints relating to the piracy of literary, artistic or musical works, sound recordings, cinematograph films and television transmissions. Against a total prohibition of such reproductions must be weighed the legitimate requirements of educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities, as well as of research institutions and reproductions for personal and private use. Provision is therefore made in the Bill for the reproduction of all works to be governed by regulations, bearing in mind that when reproductions are made, there should be no conflict between the normal exploitation of the work and the legal interests of the authors, which should not be unreasonably prejudiced. In dealing with this matter in the regulations, cognizance must be taken of the rapid technological developments which still appear to be in their infancy. To take just one example. There is a vast field of computerization, which has the potential of becoming a major factor in the reproduction and retrieval process.

A further innovation in the Bill is the provision that copyright vests in the author, whether or not the work is commissioned or undertaken by an employee. The commissioner or the employer will have to contract separately for the transfer of ownership of the copyright in the work. Despite such transfer, the residuary or moral rights of the author to claim authorship of the work, is also protected, and he may object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his honour and reputation.

Could we run the Nats in for pinching our policy?

Yes, if that were true. The provisions in the existing Act relating to the registration of artistic works as designs in terms of the Designs Act, 1967, have not been retained in this Bill. By registering a design the protection afforded by the latter Act is limited to 15 years, whereas without such registration, protection will last for 50 years. The Bill does not, however, prohibit the registration of artistic works as designs, but it would be in the author’s interest to obtain a longer period of protection without the formality of registration.

As I have mentioned earlier, technological advances have a material influence on copyright matters, and it is appropriate therefore that the relevant legislation should be reviewed continuously or from time to time, as circumstances may require. For this purpose provision has been made in the Bill for the creation of a standing advisory committee on copyright law which will function under the chairmanship of a judge of the Supreme Court. The advice of such a committee on the drafting of regulations would also be of great value in giving effect to some of the provisions embodied in this Bill.

In conclusion I want to say that there is one contentious aspect of this Bill. A submission has been made to my department by the Institute of Patents’ Agents and Copyright Agents because section 11 of the existing Act has not been repeated in this Bill. Under these circumstances I am prepared—I have already informed hon. members—to refer this Bill, after Second Reading, to a Select Committee for consideration of this particular issue.

Mr. Speaker, we have listened with interest to the hon. the Minister’s exposition of the reasons for and the content of the Bill which is now before us. We have also in the explanatory memorandum, which has been courteously put at our disposal, seen reasons for the desirability of bringing in the Bill at this time and, in particular, for enabling South Africa more readily to become a party to the Paris Act of the Berne Convention. On the other hand we have consulted with various interested parties. In particular I refer to the patent agents and patent attorneys who have gone into the Bill in some detail, have expressed a number of doubts and have even questioned the desirability of the existing Act being replaced at the present time. They have found difficulties, as I say, and they have put the question to us on this side of the House whether the purpose might not be better served by merely amending the present Copyright Act rather than by introducing a new Bill. We do not wish to take major issue on this particular contention. It seems to us that copyright is a very complex and esoteric subject on which the experts are almost bound to disagree on certain matters. It is certainly not a question that can lightly be broached by the layman. We believe it is a subject to which one should bring the maximum degree of care and expert knowledge. In terms of our own parliamentary procedure I think we have an ideal instrument to bring precisely that degree of care and expert knowledge to bear, and I think it is highly appropriate here. We thank the hon. the Minister for his willingness to send this Bill to a Select Committee, because, apart from the omission of section 11, I believe there are also other questions which could with advantage be looked at again by a Select Committee. I do not wish to labour these points too much in the Second Reading, but I think it would save us a good deal of time now, and possibly the House and the country a good deal of trouble later, if some of the points which I would otherwise have to raise at the present stage of the discussion could in fact be looked at their leisure by the experts who would be taking part in the work of the Select Committee. The hon. the Minister said he was prepared to allow the Bill to go to a Select Committee for the purpose of looking at the omission of section 11. If the hon. the Minister would indicate that he will be reasonably flexible about this and indicate that if other points of relevance are raised by members of the Select Committee, they will have the authority to look at these on behalf of this Chamber as well, I shall not labour these various difficulties and points of conflict any longer.

Having received the consent of the hon. the Minister that this Bill should go to a Select Committee where these various points which I have already for discussion can be looked at more effectively than by debate across the floor of a plenary session of this Chamber, we are perfectly willing to support the Second Reading and to participate, if required, in the work of the Select Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a few words on this Bill. I hope I understood the hon. member for Constantia correctly, but I think he advocated that the Bill should go to a Select Committee before the Second Reading.

No, after the Second Reading. After we agree to the Second Reading, it will go to a Select Committee.

I am very glad that the hon. member supports the suggestion made by the hon. the Minister that the Bill be sent to a Select Committee after the Second Reading with regard to the omission of section 11 of the original Act. This is of interest to me because the Bill which became the present Act on the Statute Book was sent to a Select Committee before the Second Reading and I happened to serve on that Select Committee. I do not think that there is an hon. member left in this House except myself who served on that committee. I think that the step which the hon. the Minister is now suggesting, that the Bill be sent to a Select Committee after the Second Reading, is a much wiser one in the light of the discussions that took place then and because of the differences of opinion which existed. As the hon. member for Constantia rightly says, there are many conflicting views and very many conflicting interests on the law of copyright At that particular time, it was very difficult in that Select Committee to really ascertain what the interests of the various bodies concerned were. The point remains, however, as the hon. the Minister has stated, that an ad hoc committee has considered all aspects of this Bill and has come to general agreement. I was informed of that by possibly the best authority which we have in the country on the question of copyright, which is a very involved subject, viz. Mr. Gideon Roos, who I think is the head of the Performing Rights Society. I think the House will recognize that this Bill has as its primary objective to give the greatest possible protection to our own intellectuals on a basis of reciprocity. It is also clear that we will give to the nationals of other countries the same protection for their intellectual products as we expect them to give to ours. The law of copyright is a highly technical subject, a subject on which there are very few world experts. Nevertheless, the Berne Convention has a basic principle written into it which reciprocally lays down that there be no stealing of the intellectual products, or of the spirits of man, as the French describe it, of one nation by another.

If we look at the history of copyright in our country since 1917, we see that the first copyright law for this country was one adopted in toto from the British Government of that time. It was then incorporated into our patents laws. Throughout the years certain aspects were withdrawn until we were left with the original Act, an Act which later became hopelessly outdated. However, with the advance of technological knowledge in the world, as well as with the development of easy means of piracy of the intellectual attributes of man, it was recognized at the Berne Convention, and particularly at the Rome Convention, that further steps and closer control were required.

Our acceptance of these conventions and developments led to the appointment of a Select Committee by Parliament, the findings of which resulted in the legislation of 1965. During the past 11 years, with the conventions the hon. the Minister referred to, we have come to recognize that with the technological advances, particularly with satellite distribution which makes piracy easier, further stricter control of copyright had to be embodied in legislation.

As I understand the situation, the legislation we are dealing with here today is based on the Berne Convention. This means that we agree to do what other countries are doing to protect the intellectual rights of man.

With these few words I support the idea of the hon. the Minister that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee after Second Reading. The principle having been accepted, the interested parties can then put their case, thus enabling us to act accordingly.

Mr. Speaker, one cannot help looking back a bit on one’s career in this hon. House. I cannot help remembering that one of the earliest recollections I have of Parliament is of being in a caucus meeting in which the hon. member, who has just sat down, was trying to explain to the parties there present all the intricacies and the ramifications of a copyright Bill. I went into that caucus meeting thinking that I knew a little bit about the Bill. When the hon. member had finished speaking, however, I was convinced that I knew nothing about it whatever, and I do not think he knew a great deal about it either. [Interjections.] The wheel has now turned full circle and I stand up now, on an occasion when a copyright Bill is before the House—having just listened to the hon. member who was then the hon. member for Turffontein—to speak on a similar Bill. The hon. member quite rightly says this is a Bill designed to protect the fruits of the mind. People who are creative and have brought to the attention of mankind something new and original in the form of a literary or cinematographic work or anything like that, are without any doubt deserving of protection. There is also no doubt that the people who do these things are people who are especially deserving of protection by the very nature of what they are. Very often they are people who are not very closely related to the daily affairs of mankind and therefore they are so easily exploited. When one thinks of the immense amount of money that can be involved in a situation like this, it becomes quite clear that tremendously close attention ought to be given to the protection of such people and their rights.

A Bill of this nature is, as the hon. member and the Minister have said, a very technical and complicated piece of legislation and I think it is entirely correct that it should be referred to a Select Committee. I should like to ask again that the hon. the Minister should give a reassurance on the question asked by the hon. member for Constantia. We should like to have the Bill referred to a Select Committee which will be empowered to consider the possibility of including clause 11 of the old Bill in this legislation. The Select Committee should, in other words, have the right to submit an amended Bill to the House. Such a Select Committee will have to be appointed if clause 11 were to be included as well as other amendments which obviously do not deal with the principle of the Bill. Amendments which deal with the implementation of the Bill will obviously come before the Select Committee and it is quite clear that the hon. the Minister will have no objection to the inclusion of such amendment in the Bill which will eventually come before the House.

There are points which worry me. The hon. the Minister referred to the question of residuary rights and the fact that a person has the right to take action if a work which he had produced is distorted or produced in such a fashion that it reflects very badly on him. I must say that we would welcome the opportunity very much to discuss this matter in a Select Committee.

There is something else which puzzles me. In terms of the definition of “adaptation” an artistic work includes a transformation of the work in such a manner that the original or substantial features thereof remain recognizable. I must say that some of the transformations that one hears of some of the popular and well-known works as performed by modern musical exponents make one wonder whether they could be classed as recognizable or not. [Interjections.]

We support the Second Reading and we welcome the appointment of a Select Committee.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister seems to have introduced the Copyright Bill in the spirit of the unanimity which prevailed during the introduction of the last few Bills and I shall do my best not to disturb that spirit.

South Africa has been a member of the Berne Convention for many years. However, the present Copyright Act does not permit South Africa to become a party to the latest conventions and it is therefore incumbent on us to put on to the Statute Book an Act which complies with the necessary requirements. Our Act was passed in 1965 and as hon. members are aware, since then there has been a convention in Stockholm in 1967. There has also been the Paris Convention in 1971. It is therefore obvious that our legislation should be based on the Acts which followed on the Paris Convention. South Africa has international obligations and, in addition, it is a far greater importer of copyright works than an exporter. On the other hand, it must reduce its outflow of foreign capital. The flexibility of the provisions of the Berne Convention will help to reduce the outflow of foreign exchange. Other countries have achieved this purpose with great success.

This Bill deals with a multitude of detail in relation to copyright, but in the main it deals with copyright in original works, infringement of copyright and remedies as well as a copyright tribunal. It provides for the extension or the restriction of certain operations. We are pleased that in a measure of this nature we are able to continue with our international connections.

This is a complicated measure, as we have heard, and it is important that we obtain unanimity as far as possible throughout the country on a measure like this. In view of the further representations which have been made to the hon. the Minister by a very substantial body, we are in full agreement that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee after Second Reading and in the circumstances we shall not oppose the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I only rise to thank hon. members for their support of this Bill. Let me say at once that one has to understand that it is quite an effort to try to reconcile the more often than not incompatible interests of different bodies in a Bill of this nature. I believe that the ad hoc committee that was appointed to investigate and draft the Bill has done very laudible work in this particular field. I would not want their work to be destroyed by our discussing the provisions of the Bill in too much detail. I have also indicated that a draft Bill was published, in January this year, for comment and so that representations could be made to us. We received representations, and accordingly we have introduced amendments to the Bill as published in January this year. I think we have probably accommodated all the views that could possibly be accommodated in the draft Bill we are now considering. Subsequently I received certain requests which revolve around the omission of the old section 11. I am naturally not going to suggest that the Select Committee, to which I propose to refer this Bill after second reading, should be in any way restricted in its consideration of other aspects of the Bill, but I have a request to members who may serve on that Select Committee. For reasons I have already indicated, we have to pass the Bill this year, and therefore time is of the essence in the contract, if I may use the legal phrase. My experience of select committees on other Bills that are involved has not been a very happy one. I do not want to delay this measure. For the reasons I have given to the hon. House, and for the reasons indicated by other hon. members who took part in the discussions, I have to have this measure on the Statute Book this session. Having said this, let me add that after second reading I propose to move that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee, not only for the purpose of having them consider the inclusion or exclusion or omission of the old section 11, but also to have them study the Bill as a whole. I would ask hon. members, however, to cooperate with me in this regard to ensure that we get the Bill through.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether the hon. the Minister, in allowing the Select Committee flexibility in dealing with the Bill, will also accept the assurances from this side of the House that we shall pay due regard to any request from the Minister that we should not unduly interfere with the structure of the Bill?

Mr. Speaker, I propose to do exactly what the hon. member has suggested, and that is to refer the Bill as such to a Select Committee, but only with the special plea, which will not be incorporated in the motion I shall put before the House, that we get the work done. Having said this, I do not think I need to add to any observations that hon. members have made, except to say something in regard to the hon. member for Durban Point’s interjection. If he had read this Bill he would have understood that one’s rights are only protected if there is something new and original which is produced in some material form.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, such a long time elapsed before we finally resumed the Second Reading of this Bill that the Whip of my party told me quite a few times that I was pregnant with my speech. My wife, too, was almost moved to divorce me. She must have typed it seven times. I almost decided to tell the hon. the Minister: “For heaven’s sake, take the thing and go home with it.”

Or “table it”.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister of Community Development has introduced into the House the Co-ordination of Housing Matters Bill, the principle of which we of the NRP have little hesitation in supporting. We gladly support the principle of the Bill as we believe that a genuine attempt is being made to co-ordinate housing matters. It will no doubt improve the housing situation and iron out a large number of the problem areas that exist in the field of residential township development and establishment. We are all very well aware of the chaos that erupted in the township establishment programme for the middle and upper income groups during the past 10 years. We have also heard the many interpretations by a variety of speakers as to why this state of affairs actually came about and who was to blame for it. Some blamed the greedy township developers; others laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the authorities for applying too much time-consuming red tape. The way I personally saw it, both were possibly to blame and I should like to give my interpretative sketch of the history of this housing calamity so that, with the help of the Bill before the House today, a repetition of this calamity may be avoided in the future.

During the ’fifties the proclamation of townships was a reasonably simple one and sufficient applications were always in the pipeline to satisfy the demand. In the early ’sixties, however, and after Sharpeville and the dramatic uncertainty that followed, coupled with a down-turn in the economy, a stop was virtually put to any township plan being fed into this pipeline. The property market went into the doldrums for some three to four years, but this was just the lull before the storm. By the mid-’sixties the country was out of the mini-depression and well on its way to a gigantic boom. There were very few residential stands ready and available for sale to the public. Due to this tremendous demand for erven, prices sky-rocketed and developers who had erven for sale immediately reaped handsome profits with the result that many more townships were inserted into this pipeline which was already choked with red tape. Jealous and irate officials heaped more red tape on to developers and slowed the establishment process down even further with the result that prices rose even more rapidly. In 1970 almost every farm within miles of any city or town was being surveyed, cut up and fed into this now hopelessly choked system of township development. Greed had turned many hundreds of inexperienced and hopelessly undercapitalized men to the field of township development and many more were forming syndicates of speculators to buy blocks of erven wholesale from developers in order to market these at ridiculously high prices at a later date even though townships had not even gone into the preliminary phase of proclamation and although everyone knew full well that the process of establishment would probably take some four years or even longer to complete.

The merry-go-round was now at full swing and nothing could stop it. It was extremely difficult for anyone to jump off this merry-go-round because everyone seemed to be making a lot of money. Unfortunately, it was mostly paper money. The big crunch finally came in the mid-’seventies when all of a sudden everyone realized that there were thousands upon thousands of erven on the drawing boards for people who had at that stage not even been born. The resulting crash of big and small companies alike as well as thousands of individuals who staked their savings in property shares or unproclaimed erven can only be described as a catastrophe of the first order.

I fully believe that if we had had a system in the 1960s that could have completed the draft conditions of establishment of a township in a matter of months instead of years, the buying demand and pressure would never really have built up to such a ridiculous extreme and bona fide developers would then have been able to keep pace with the abnormal demand and have been quite satisfied to make a normal return instead of the fortunes that were won or lost during those dramatic years.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this Bill which the hon. the Minister has laid before us should be able to devise and erect a flexible pipeline, which should be able to cope with the pressures of boom times and avert a catastrophe similar to the one which occurred during the past 10 years which I have briefly described. I also believe that it is necessary that the formation of the advisory committee be given the hon. the Minister’s urgent attention because, due to the present slump in the property market, the time is now very ripe to implement many of the excellent suggestions put forward by the Fouché Commission while the property market is at its present low ebb, so that when the wheels start rolling again an efficient and well designed set of machinery will exist free from much of the red tape that has previously bogged down this whole industry.

Judging from what I have been saying up to now about this Bill it would seem that I endorse this Bill wholly and in toto. That, in fact, is not quite correct. I certainly do endorse the principles of this Bill but I also believe that there is definitely room for improvement. I now turn to the Bill itself with a few suggestions as to how I believe this Bill can be considerably improved in order to produce an even more helpful Act for the purpose of assisting housing in general and also the programme for housing in South Africa.

My first suggestion to the hon. the Minister is that prior to the Committee Stage he discusses the workings and functions of the advisory committee again with his legal advisers and his department. He should ask them pertinently to insert into the list of functions of this committee the absolute need that the committee should expressly consider methods of drastically shortening the duration of time that it takes to establish a township as well as ways and means of reducing some of the required unnecessary costs which are presently keeping prices of residential erven so high for the genuine home-builder.

That is implicit in the present Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I realize that as the Bill now reads these two matters that I have raised certainly are included and are implicit and that they are presently in the working and scope of the Bill. I would, however, like them to be highlighted and stressed within the Act itself so that the advisory committee should not lose sight of the need to cut out wasteful costs and thus unnecessary time delays which naturally also affect the cost of each stand to the home buyer.

Mr. Speaker, the second area of the Bill that, in my opinion, requires improvement is that of the composition of the advisory committee. The hon. member for Rondebosch has already very ably dealt with his objection to the composition of this committee. I wish to respectfully suggest to the hon. the Minister that, in as much as three weeks have now passed since the hon. member for Rondebosch spoke to the House, he should look at that speech again and consider the arguments that were presented then. I certainly endorse those views. I also believe that this advisory committee has been so constituted that it is far too top heavy with men who are personally involved with the programme of township and housing development in their official capacities. This committee has far too few specialists and experts from outside the circle of housing officials.

As the Bill now reads, this advisory committee will be largely made up of officials to co-ordinate housing matters, but the question we ask ourselves is: Can they really advise themselves? Does human nature allow any man to really critically examine a programme which he himself has planned in front of his colleagues or even his own boss? During the speech of the hon. member for Rondebosch, the hon. the Minister interjected with the question: “Is it not possible for us to achieve both these objectives?” He was naturally referring to the objectives of coordination and advice on housing matters. I believe it can be done by changing the composition of this advisory committee to a small extent. My suggestion to the hon. the Minister is that he reduce the number of men from his department on the committee from four to two. That would leave on the committee the Secretary for Community Development as well as one other senior member of the department. The Secretary will naturally still retain the chairmanship. One only has to scrutinize the excellent piece of work done, in record time, by the Fouché Commission to realize that the hon. the Minister surely does not need to pad this committee with any more men from his department to keep a reasonable balance. I would also like to advocate that the number of persons who come from outside the official circles, and to have special knowledge of building, town planning and housing matters, be increased from four to six. The hon. member for Hillbrow has suggested six specific members. I think it will be very difficult to implement this suggestion as some of those bodies may or may not be existent at the time. I can think of dozens of categories of specialists who could give expert advice to this advisory committee and eventually to the Housing Policy Council. One only needs to think of the type and categories of advice required to realize that even six is really too few. One thinks for example pertinently of engineers for water, roads, sewers and electricity; town planners; building specialists; quantity surveyors; township developers; architects; landscape architects; property owners’ associations; building societies, etc. So many specialists are available to us and they are certainly needed on this committee. The hon. the Minister’s biggest problem is, of course, going to be to decide whom to include and whom to exclude without hurting too many feelings. I am sure that the hon. the Minister will agree with me that these minor changes will bring about a better balance and that, without increasing the number of advisory committee members, he will then not only have a very good co-ordinating body, but will also be able to count on a very solid advisory body.

My third suggestion to the hon. the Minister is, in my opinion, by far the most important one. I believe there is a very serious error in the Bill, i.e. the insertion of one small sentence, namely clause 3(3). This small subsection in fact makes a complete mockery of the long title of the Bill as well as of some other clauses in the Bill itself. This subsection now expressly will exclude some 80% of all the housing in South Africa and all housing matters from the jurisdiction of the advisory committee that is formed, as well as of the policy council. Mr. Speaker, allow me to re-read a portion of the long title of the Bill. The Bill specifically is—

How can a Bill which contains the words “for the inhabitants of the Republic” in its title be placed before the House when, in a minor subsection, it expressly excludes 80% of these inhabitants? This subsection not only excludes large slices of the White population’s housing needs, namely those of families in the lower economic brackets which are assisted by the department’s economic and sub-economic housing schemes, but also virtually all the Coloured, Indian and Black housing of South Africa. If we are to establish a national housing policy council together with its advisory committee, surely all housing will have to be included and not only the middle and upper income groups that require housing. If this committee and the council intend to effectively “formulate a national housing policy”, as is laid down as one of their functions, they certainly cannot do so if they do not have all the relevant information and data concerning the needs of all the inhabitants of South Africa. The hon. the Minister pointed out in his Second Reading speech that the necessary machinery to deal with low-cost housing already exists in South Africa. We agree with him that the machinery does in fact exist and we accept the fact that his department is doing its utmost to cope with a very difficult situation, but does the hon. the Minister really believe that his department is so perfect that it will no longer be able to even consider advice from this specific expert body? Surely his department would be only too happy to listen to expert and friendly advice from a specialist committee which has been formed and chaired by the Department of Community Development’s own and very capable Secretary. Surely the hon. the Minister must be able to see that such a committee will not, in any way, hamper or retard his low-cost housing schemes and programmes, but that it will in fact be able to assist and advise on the possible speeding up of these very urgently required schemes.

I would further like to point out that all housing developments are inter-related and inter-connected by the necessary services such as electric supply, sewer works, waterworks, road and rail networks. I am quite frankly not able to see how this committee can function properly if it is not fully informed on the facts regarding all township developments and the necessary services required. It must be obvious to all that township development cannot be seen in isolation for one particular income group. I stress the words “income group”, because we are not talking about colour, we are talking about housing and specifically about the physical aspects in regard to it.

Tell the hon. member for Rondebosch that too.

All the essential services of every group are completely interconnected and inter-related. I genuinely believe that the problems that existed in regard to the provision of housing for the upper and middle income groups have now, by and large, fallen away. The problems which still exist should be very easily rectified if the recommendations of the Fouché Commission are carried out. The problems relating to the provision of housing for the lower income groups are, in my opinion, far more serious. I truly believe that this committee will find that it can be of far more value to our country if it applies its expertise to the problems of the less fortunate inhabitants of our country. According to the Bill as it now stands, the committee will formulate a national housing policy, but only for the middle and upper income groups. One has thus to ask: Who will actually be formulating a housing policy for the lower income groups?

I would also like pertinently to ask the hon. the Minister whether all four of the Administrators of the provinces actually realize that in terms of this Bill the jurisdiction of this committee has been so limited in its advisory powers related to the upper income groups that the Administrators or their representatives will have no jurisdiction over some 80% of all housing matters in their own provinces. I am going to assume that since the hon. Minister of Community Development is considered by many as a logical, rational and reasonable person …

Who bluffed you?

I said “by many”. Anyway, since he is considered by many to be such a person, I am going to assume that he will no doubt formally move that clause 3(3) be deleted prior to the next stage of this Bill.

Based on this premise I wish to move even further with this Bill and try to put across to the House a view which I have held for many years and for which I believe I will get support from both sides of the House. Taking the principle of the Bill, i.e. the provision of and co-ordination of matters concerning housing for all our people, to its logical conclusion, it is obvious that if we had one major umbrella type of committee, together with a housing policy council, covering the entire broad spectrum of housing for all groups, we would then see the need for a fully-fledged Ministry of Housing. I believe this next step is inevitable and has now become absolutely essential if one considers that we have a backlog of an estimated 300 000 to 400 000 houses for Blacks, Indians, Coloureds and Whites, not even to mention their natural annual increase. These figures I get from the University of Pretoria. Their Economics Department has estimated that there is a shortage of some 300 000 houses for the Black income groups. I am referring to income groups; I do not want to bring colour into the debate at all. One can see the need for an all-out, concentrated effort to co-ordinate our entire country’s housing needs. The financial requirements to wipe out such an estimated backlog will possibly run to between R2 000 million and R3 000 million. That is no hay!

It is no chicken feed either!

One must bear in mind that in the Budget on Wednesday the hon. the Minister of Finance allocated R16 million to the hon. the Minister of Community Development for housing for Blacks.

What do you mean by “Black”? Are you using it in the wider sense, to include all non-Europeans?

No, the amount was listed as far as the hon. the Minister’s appropriation was concerned.

So, by “Blacks” you mean “Bantu”?

Correct. This “under one roof” Housing Ministry should be responsible for the following: Firstly, to investigate, programme and co-ordinate the housing needs of our entire population; secondly, to set up a priority list of needs and programme the available funds accordingly; thirdly, to stimulate and co-ordinate all research work and to distribute relevant information on building materials, building techniques, essential services, township layouts and in general methods of reducing costs—I believe the existing NBRI of the CSIR would be an excellent vehicle for this project; fourthly, to co-ordinate all township developments; fifthly, to prepare and present overall master plans in conjunction with the local authorities for future urban developments; sixthly, to take cognizance of the traditional building industry’s peak and trough periods of activity, and to stabilize and rationalize this essential industry and its massive employment potential accordingly; seventhly, to control and replace slums with necessary and suitable accommodation; eighthly, to programme and erect required housing schemes; ninthly, to promote individual home ownership for everyone; and tenthly, to try and create more pleasant environments for all and attempt to improve the quality of life of our underprivileged in the townships.

I realize that, strictly speaking, this plea for a Ministry of Housing under one roof is somewhat outside the scope of the discussion of this Bill, but it is my sincere belief that this is the natural extension of the overall planning and establishing of a national policy regarding housing for the inhabitants of the Republic. I also realize that it is not the hon. the Minister of Community Development who will be able to answer my request for a Ministry of Housing. What I am suggesting, however, is that he and other Cabinet members should have further discussions at Cabinet level in order to bring the needed rationale into the housing field. It must surely be obvious to all that in order to maximize our housing efforts and to reduce our total housing costs by millions of rand, we need to concentrate and co-ordinate all our housing efforts instead of allowing a number of unrelated Government and semi-Government bodies to programme and plan their own particular housing needs without the necessary expertise. With an efficient Housing Ministry—and I believe we have one ready and waiting—it may become more apparent to all where this country’s real priorities lie, and we shall not have each Government department dreaming up some or other grandiose scheme which will cost us millions upon millions of rand. Let us take the ridiculous example of the announcement a few weeks ago that a R80 million tunnel is going to be built near Worcester which will save motorists all of 11 km compared with the existing road. Just think how many houses can be built with that R80 million. 25 000 houses could be built for Blacks in Soweto or Guguletu with that money. How many jobs would the building of 25 000 homes create for our unemployed compared with the number of jobs for those who might be involved in building this one stupid tunnel?

We have an additional R80 million available for housing.

I say that the tunnel is not necessary. The savings do not even amount to the interest factor on the money used in the building of that tunnel. The tunnel will only save us R60 000 in 10 years.

You are displaying your ignorance.

Would the hon. member rather have a tunnel or problems in Soweto?

I would rather save money and build the houses anyway.

You do not know what you are talking about. I may be a little naive and stupid, but where do the priorities of the Government lie? Do we build this tunnel or do we build 25 000 houses for the people who do not have a roof over their heads? Hon. members saw what happened in Soweto and Guguletu and they want to talk about building a bloody tunnel!

Order!

My apologies, Mr. Speaker. With a strong, effective Ministry of Housing there could perhaps be adequate motivation for the real priority needs of our people.

I want to conclude by saying that the hon. the Minister can certainly count on us to support the principle of this Bill. However, we in the NRP should like to urge him to look very carefully at the suggestions I have just made. We offer our support in the sincere belief that there could be considerable improvement in our housing effort in this country, if we forget about colour and become involved in the building of houses for all our people. My party and I have been accused of looking at colour when it comes to housing. However, I am not looking at colour; colour has been dealt with in this Bill. I have already thanked the hon. the Minister for this good Bill, but we must involve all the people and not just 20% of the people in this country.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South must excuse me if I do not delve into his tunnel-digging in depth. I think that next week there will be a good opportunity to discuss the tunnel again. Nor do I want to deal with the history of the problems relating to housing, particularly with regard to the founding and development of townships, because the hon. member for Langlaagte has already dealt with that. In the course of my speech I shall discuss other remarks he made. Then, too, I shall refer specifically to the speech by the hon. member for Rondebosch.

This Bill is the third one arising out of the report of the Fouché Commission. I think that this in itself constitutes a glowing tribute to the work of that commission. That is why I, too, should like to thank them this afternoon for the comprehensive and thorough investigations they carried out, the responsible evaluation of the evidence submitted to them and the business like recommendations they made. In my opinion the result of the commission’s work attests to knowledge and insight.

What gave rise to the appointment of the commission? On the very first page of the report we read that the reasons for the appointment of the Fouché Commission were twofold: Firstly, the high cost of the provision of housing, and secondly—this is the important point which this legislation really concerns—the inability of persons in the income groups just higher than those for which housing is provided from the National Housing Fund, to meet their own needs. This is the real reason for this Bill. This and other problems are mentioned in the terms of reference of that commission, and I am not going to go into that now. A wide spectrum of evidence was obtained from, inter alia, private township developers, local managements, SAPOA, directors of local management, institutes and many others. The schedule of that commission’s report relating to this matter is an impressive list. Expert assistance was obtained and experts made contributions to the investigation.

They identified bottle-necks and two in particular of the shortcomings that were identified relate to the issues of co-ordination and uniform action. Examples mentioned in this regard are a large number of undeveloped plots, new township developments which carry on in spite of that large number of undeveloped plots, a shortage of services, financing problems, questionable practices, major differences between provinces and also local authorities, varying standards of services and housing and then the payment of endowments. I think that the results of these deficiencies can be summed up in four points, namely wastage of land, wastage of time, financial implications and unnecessary costly discrepancies. Consequently it has become essential that steps be taken and that is why this legislation is before this House today.

The Bill provides that two bodies be established in order that these deficiencies may be eliminated. The first is the Housing Matters Advisory Committee and the second, the Housing Policy Council. Their aim must be to eliminate the bottlenecks by way of the following: Providing co-ordination, eliminating costly discrepancies, effecting savings on housing, expediting the provision of housing, effecting standardization of services and housing and promoting house-ownership in general.

The cost of plots is a problem of cardinal importance and is determined by a whole series of factors which are not easy to control. Probably the prices of residential plots should be enabled to rise, but not by 10% per annum, the rate of increases encountered by this commission. The size of plots is very important. Plots that are too small give rise to slum conditions. Plots that are too large constitute under-utilization of space which in turn increases the cost of the provision of services in particular and the cost of their maintenance as well. Standards of services must not be too luxurious nor must they be too primitive. We do not want luxury that we cannot afford. On the other hand we do place a high premium on the basic facilities and on the standard of housing. Township developers render an important service which the authorities do not always see their way clear to rendering, but they do also take questionable action on occasion, as the commission found.

To provide these necessities in the correct fashion, co-ordination is necessary, and the existing laws have shortcomings in this regard. Take for example the poor use of land to which the Fouché Report refers in paragraph 35. It is mentioned that there are local authorities which have measures prohibiting more than one dwelling unit being constructed on a plot even though that plot may be as big as one hectare. This constitutes under-utilization of land and gives rise to unnecessary new residential developments, spiralling prices of land, service shortages and also an increase in service costs.

Then, too, there are the unrealistic requirements with regard to servitudes, streets that are too wide and other unnecessary restrictions. It appears that provincial administrations do not always take action to prevent these unrealistic requirements being enforced. The question therefore occurs as to whether the various provincial administrations should have this authority, because if every provincial administration were to set its own norms, uniformity would suffer and there would be wastage. That is why the central authority ought to have the final authority so that uniformity and other requirements may be enforced.

The hon. the Minister of Community Development is often reproached when too few residential plots are available or when the cost of plots rises abnormally due to the under-utilization of land. Consequently he ought to obtain the power to terminate such practices. I believe that this legislation makes provision for those very powers. If it is now feared that excessive inroads will be made into the autonomy of local and provincial authorities, the provisions of this legislation themselves constitute the guarantee that it is virtually impossible for anything of the kind to occur. If it should occur, it would only be drastic if the authorities concerned neglected their ordinary duties. The guarantee lies in the terms of reference of the Housing Affairs Advisory Committee and in the composition of this committee. I really cannot quote this at length once again.

The committee institutes investigations and advises the Minister. The committee has no executive powers. The committee may consult with persons, bodies, and authorities. The committee does not have the power to alienate rights. I believe that the first amendment of the hon. member for Hillbrow is already embodied in these provisions.

If we look at chapter 8 of the Housing Act, at section 61, the section relating to the powers of local authorities, we note that local authorities have wide powers. They can build houses. They can carry out schemes. They can lease or sell dwellings. Section 66(1) of the Housing Act even makes provision for them to expropriate land. Local authorities have wide powers, powers which will remain unaffected but which will be co-ordinated in future in order to meet certain needs and eliminate certain deficiencies.

One of the important deficiencies in the existing dispensation relates to the considerable discrepancies between the township development procedures in the various provinces—the existing discrepancies in procedure. The matter is dealt with in paragraphs 48 and 49 of the Fouché Report. At issue here are disputes, specific periods laid down for certain transactions, the submission of applications and the authority to whom they must be submitted. Also at issue is the question whether the application in question must be a long or a short one. Then, too, there is the number of plans to be submitted. For example, one province requires that 50 plans be submitted. The number of Government departments to be consulted and the advertising of applications are also involved. It was necessary for the commission to make 12 recommendations in respect of these discrepancies alone. I just want to quote the twelfth recommendation of the commission. We find it on page 46 of the commission’s report. It reads as follows—

These discrepancies exist today among provinces and local authorities. However they are discrepancies that can be eliminated by this legislation. The provinces and the local authorities are not thereby made the lackeys of the Minister. They are well represented on the advisory committee. The four directors of local government serve on it. Two representatives of the United Municipal Executive also serve on it. These comprise six of the 16 members of the committee.

The Housing Policy Council will comprise the Minister and four MPCs. They have to weigh the advice given, and since the provincial authorities perform such an important function, namely the control of local authorities, that right must continue to stand, and must be inalienable. From now on, however, uniform procedures should be adopted.

On 15 March—that is really a long time ago, as the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South pointed out—the hon. member for Rondebosch said that the legislation did not go far enough. He had two difficulties in particular with the legislation. In the first place there is the composition of the advisory committee and in this regard it sounds to me as if the NRP has the same difficulties. The hon. member for Rondebosch states that this is not an expert advisory council because the building societies, town planners, architects and academic experts on the field of housing are not represented thereon and consequently the committee will supposedly not be capable of carrying out its function efficiently. According to the amendment as printed on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. member for Hillbrow, he wants to take the matter even further than the hon. member for Rondebosch proposed doing.

The second problem which the hon. member for Rondebosch mentioned is the demarcation of the sphere of activities of the advisory committee—the mysterious clause 3(3). He refers to the hon. the Minister’s introductory speech and states that the legislation should be concentrated on the housing problems of the middle and higher income groups and because the Blacks are largely concerned with low-cost housing, they have been eliminated in the legislation.

I really think he should have included this bit of colour in his argument to give his contribution at least the appearance of being a Prog one, because in fact he was able to say nothing against the legislation that was worthy of serious consideration.

The hon. the Minister said—and he stressed the point—that the legislation does not relate to low-cost housing because there is adequate machinery whereby to plan, coordinate and supply the needs of that category. I think that the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South does in fact concur with that if I understood him correctly. However the hon. member for Rondebosch states that that machinery is inadequate to supply low-cost housing. He is therefore arguing with the hon. the Minister.

Let us look at what the figures tell us. Over the period 1973-’77, 146 072 dwelling units were completed by the private sector for Whites and 23 191 by the department and local authorities. As far as Whites are concerned, therefore, the State has assisted directly or indirectly in providing 13,7% of the total number of dwelling units over that period of five years. Over the same period of five years, however, the department and local managements completed 62 045 dwelling units for Coloureds, whereas the private sector completed only 12 091. Therefore as far as the Coloureds are concerned, the State has provided 83,7% of the total. As far as the Indians are concerned, the private sector has provided 6 895 and the department plus the local authorities have provided 13 325. Of this total, then, the State provided 65,9%. Since Black housing does not fall under this department, I believe that the figures in that regard are not at issue at this stage.

That is just where the problem lies.

Perhaps that is in fact where the problem lies. However, we must take note of how the existing machinery has assisted the Coloureds and Indians in particular as far as housing is concerned: 83,7% in respect of the Coloureds and 65,9% in respect of the Indians. As far as the Whites are concerned, the aid comprises a mere 15,9%.

What has been the result of this successful machinery providing low-cost housing? Looking at the situation of the Whites, we see that there is not really any general shortage of low-cost housing at this stage. We understand that the low demand which there is at certain places ought to be satisfied within a year. As far as the Coloureds are concerned there is a shortage of almost 58 000 dwelling units in the Republic. If, in addition, we bear in mind that on 30 September last year, 27 800 dwelling units were under construction and 14 400 were being planned—due to a shortage of money the latter number could not be built—we have the necessary evidence for the statement that this machinery is succeeding in satisfying the demand for low-cost housing. The accelerated housing programme for Coloureds has already resulted in a drop in the backlog of about 6 000 over the past two years.

And you still say that you do not want advice.

I am coming to the question of advice.

As far as the Indians are concerned there is a shortage of almost 21 000 at this stage, but on 30 September last year more than 3 500 dwelling units were under construction and a further 10 200 were at the planning stage, but at that stage the funds to build them were lacking. Therefore there is still a backlog and no one is making any secret of it. However, what is important as regards the legislation is the fact that the department certainly has the machinery to cut down on those shortages, and furthermore it is doing so at a considerable rate. The hon. member for Rondebosch also referred very fleetingly to the situation of squatters. At present, to the best of my knowledge, there is a shortage of 17 400 houses for squatters in the Western Cape as far as Coloureds are concerned. By the end of 1983 this ought to have been eliminated, according to the Department of Community Development. 6 600 of these families have already been resettled over the past two years and at the moment 8 000 subeconomic units, which will make a big hole in that backlog, are being planned at Mitchell’s Plain. Due to the building slump and the present unemployment in the building industry, the Government has made additional finance available in the recent budget specifically to meet the need for low-cost housing, and this finance will be used largely for non-Whites, as I indicated percentagewise. I mention this for the sake of the colour conscience of the PFP, which gives them such an incurable guilt complex. In my opinion the hon. member for Rondebosch is confusing the need with the machinery to meet that need. The need exists, but the machinery to meet that need also exists.

The statistics of the Department of Community Development indicate convincingly that we have the answer to the problem of low-cost housing. We are overcoming the problem. However, the figures also show that we do not have the answer to the problem of housing for the middle and higher income groups. When I say this, however, I differ with the hon. member for Rondebosch because he says that there is not a problem or a need at those levels.

No, I did not say that.

When I read his speech I took it to mean that. I am sorry if I understood him wrongly.

I said that there was a need for co-ordination, but there is no major problem as regards a shortage.

This is the group which must be assisted by the private sector. If we study the figures relating to the number of dwelling units completed by the private sector for Whites in the period 1973-’77 we see that 86,3% of all the White housing was provided by the private sector over that period. However, when we look at the graph we see how it drops from 34 766 units provided by the private sector in 1973 to 30 713 in 1975, and to a mere 19 819 in 1977. In five years the number of units per annum has dropped by almost 50%. This fact constitutes the most convincing evidence that a serious need has developed which the private sector cannot meet, and it affects the middle and higher income groups. As representatives we have encountered these problems and we are aware that there is in fact a growing problem in this connection. House-ownership has become difficult and almost impossible for people in those income groups, and the Fouché Commission identified this problem and proposed a solution because it is important that house-ownership be made possible for those groups as well.

The ambit of the legislation, which the hon. member for Rondebosch is also concerned about, is not as limited as he thinks. In his Second Reading speech the hon. the Minister said, and I quote (Hansard, 14.3.78, col. 2923)—

That is what the hon. the Minister said in his Second Reading speech. He therefore acknowledged that this legislation had to function in the broader sphere of housing. This is the comprehensive aim of the legislation and it is not exclusive. Rather it is inclusive. Therefore, although the legislation will be used to deal with the housing needs of the middle and higher income groups in particular, any useful and appropriate finding will obviously have an effect in the low-cost housing group. The legislation itself, clause 3(1) in particular, embodies this idea.

Clause 3(3), which excludes the Housing Act and the Community Development Act, does not mean in practice what the hon. member for Rondebosch and also the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South said it means. Look for example at section 11(2) of the Housing Act, Act No. 4 of 1966. Therein we read that the Secretary for Community Development can grant to a local authority the professional and other assistance it deems necessary to enable such local authority to carry out the aims of the Act in question. In other words, interaction between the department and the local authorities has been possible for some time. Nor is that possibility being eliminated. The Housing Commission, the Community Development Board and this advisory committee are not going to function in separate compartments; cross-fertilization will take place in order that housing in South Africa in general may best be served. That is why clause 3(3), the exclusion clause, does not present a problem as far as I am concerned. It prevents overlapping while not excluding desirable interaction.

The hon. member for Rondebosch also objected to the composition of the advisory committee. He said that it would comprise a group of officials who would have to advise themselves. He said that this caused a dangerous closed bureaucratic circle. If he looks at the evidence and conclusions of the Fouché Commission, he will understand that this committee is to eliminate specific hitches, hitches which occur at the very levels at which these people operate. Twelve of the 16 members represent those levels of administration at which the bottlenecks exist and that is why the advisory committee has been constituted in such a way as to be capable of eliminating those hitches. They are now getting a say in the determining of procedures which are to eliminate existing delays and cost increases.

In addition the Housing Policy Council, comprising the Minister plus four MPCs, is the guarantee against undesirable bureaucracy, because ultimately the Minister is the responsible person. He has to take the decision and implement it. He is also responsible to the Government, and I am sure that the private sector and the Opposition will act as watchdogs. That is why I am entirely satisfied with the composition of the committee.

However, the hon. member for Rondebosch linked his criticism of the composition of the committee to the sphere of the provision of low-cost housing. He wants architects, town planners and others in this advisory committee. However, if we take a look at the National Housing Commission, which deals specifically with low-cost housing, we see that a quantity surveyor, Prof. Louw, is the chairman of that commission. We also see that Prof. Erika Theron, who is a sociologist, is the deputy chairman.

Then, too, there are Prof. Joubert and Prof. Strating, both of whom are medical specialists; Prof. Delport, a lawyer, and Prof. Maritz, a quantity surveyor. In other words, there are already six academics in the National Housing Commission. Apart from them there is an architect, Mr. Gildenhuys; a director of housing of the Port Elizabeth Municipality, Mr. Cleary; an experienced former provincial secretary, Mr. Rothmann; a businessman and farmer, Mr. Steenkamp; and an Indian town clerk, Mr. Nicher. I am sure that the hon. member for Rondebosch is entirely satisfied with the composition of the commission. Its members are professional people and experts, and that is why our low-cost housing programme is making progress. This commission is made up of the people most capable of carrying out its task. If the advisory committee which we want to establish in terms of the Bill were also to be so widely based, it would merely cause unnecessary duplication and we should not solve the problems that occur at other levels.

We propose that it be converted into one body.

I really think the argument of the hon. member for Rondebosch was negative. I also regret to have to say that in my opinion he is no longer as scientific in his discussion of affairs in this House as he was four years ago, when he came here.

I want to conclude by saying that in my opinion the housing problems at this level have been very clearly identified by the Fouché Commission, and that this Bill is the instrument whereby those problems may be solved. Consequently I take pleasure in supporting it.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for False Bay, like all other hon. members, has, I believe, made a constructive contribution to this debate. I think the new advisory committee would be well advised to start its homework by reading this debate very thoroughly. They can then pick out the best parts and leave out the weaker parts of the debate. As the matter has already been fully debated, I do not propose to be repetitive this afternoon. I shall also try to be as brief as possible. This, I believe, is the start of a blue-print for certain types of housing in South Africa, and it should be encouraged. I believe we must encourage our people, at all cost, to have a stake in property in South Africa. In saying this I also recognize the fact as has often been said, that we shall have to build more houses in the course of the next 25 years than have been built over the last 300 years. The building society movement, and to a lesser extent other institutions, play a very vital role in housing matters. In terms of his powers the hon. the Minister can, of course, appoint a member of the Association of Building Societies to the advisory committee, and I hope he will do so because finance from the building societies is a very important facet, if not the most important facet, in relation to private housing.

I would also like an assurance from the hon. the Minister that one of the matters that he will refer to the committee will be the question of ensuring that building societies must have sufficient finance to grant bonds expeditiously. I notice that in clause 4(1)(g) the hon. the Minister seems to envisage the question of financing for there is provision for somebody nominated by the hon. the Minister of Finance to be appointed on the advisory committee. Owing to the shortage of finance at times I have known building societies to have had no alternative but to keep applicants waiting for six months or longer before instructing registration of bonds. In other words, the building societies may, within two weeks, advise an applicant for a bond that his application has been granted but after that, even though they say that the bond has been granted in principle, they can take anything up to six months or longer, or even a shorter period, before the bond is instructed. As hon. members are aware, the money is not paid out until the bond has been registered. Many people who sell houses are therefore placed in very difficult positions. One must take into account, for example, a man who sells a house and has to move to another town. He cannot buy a house in the other town until the house in the first town has been sold, and invariably that sale is held up by virtue of the fact that the bond has not been registered in the name of the present buyer. There is also a second type of seller. A man who sells in the same town, and moves from one house to another, encounters the same problem. A third type of seller is obviously the man who requires the finance.

However, for whatever reason, both the buyer and seller are placed in a most invidious position because the sale is subject to the registration of a bond. A very real hardship ensues for both the buyer and the seller as a result of this delay in the registration of the bond because the building societies do not have sufficient finance. It is absolutely essential that the committee evolves a policy together with the hon. the Minister of Finance—because he will have to be consulted in regard to this matter— whereby the building societies are provided with sufficient finance to ensure that a bond can be instructed within 30 days from date of application and be registered thereafter not as the position presently is. Here I am not referring to luxury houses because I can understand that in the case of that sort of house there can be long delays in the granting of bonds. In the case of non-luxury houses, however, I feel that 30 days is an optimum period before the instruction for the bond must go out, and the building society should be in a position to finance the bond within that period.

A very important facet is the Sale of Land on Instalments Act, and I am pleased that the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs is present at this stage because many plots and houses are sold in terms of this Act. We find, however, that this Act falls under the Department of Economic Affairs, whereas housing falls under the hon. the Minister of Community Development. At this very moment a commission is sitting which has been appointed by the State President. However, the matter falls under the Department of Economic Affairs even though it relates to housing. I feel that these matters should be co-ordinated. Either the hon. the Minister of Community Development should agree that an official from the Department of Economic Affairs be appointed to serve on the advisory committee or, alternatively, the Sale of Land on Instalments Act should not fall under the Department of Economic Affairs but rather under the Department of Community Development. At the moment, however, one has an untenable situation because two separate arms of the executive deal with the same matter. As I have said, there is a lot of duplication, and I am quite certain that if the hon. the Minister consults with his colleague, the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs, he will find that I am correct in saying that one or other Minister must take responsibility and that one cannot have both Ministers taking responsibility for virtually the same matter. Then there are also bodies like Sapoa, for example, which make an exceptionally valuable contribution. I am certain that bodies such as these should be consulted and I am sure that the hon. the Minister will ensure that they are consulted by the advisory committee. Perhaps a member of Sapoa will even be one of those nominated to serve on the advisory committee. It is also essential that township procedures be expedited and that red tape be eliminated. We have had long discussions about that. The long delay adds enormously to the costs of the plots and in the long run, of course, to the cost of the housing. In view of the limited funds available to township developers and the high cost of land, I think it is essential that where local authorities consider that there is a shortage of plots and of housing, the demand for housing then justifies their installing the services at their own cost and then obtaining a refund for what they have laid out by way of the payments from the end—consumers who will be using the facilities in the particular township. This, of course, cannot be done in the case of the planning of long-term townships where plots lie vacant for many decades. This is, however, my suggestion in terms of cases where the municipalities have done the investigation and feel that it is a short-term township in the sense that rapid building development will take place there. In the case of long-term townships the present position must obviously pertain.

This Bill can introduce a new era in the field of home ownership in South Africa and I believe that we have sufficient expertise in South Africa to ensure that this particular Bill is properly utilized. A home means stability, and it also means that a person has a stake in the country. It is for those reasons, and for the others I have enumerated, that we in this party will support the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to associate myself with the hon. member for False Bay who expressed his appreciation—so. I gathered from his speech—for the legislation. I agree with the hon. member that hon. members of the NRP and PFP can probably be reassured by the comprehensive provisions of this legislation which also makes provision for the objections raised by the hon. members. As the hon. member for False Bay clearly indicated with regard to the objection by the hon. member for Rondebosch to the constitution of the committee, we have the reassurance in this legislation that seven of the 16 members of the advisory committee will be drawn from the private sector. If one makes an analysis to determine what number of inhabitants of the Republic are represented by those seven members of the advisory committee who are from the private sector, one finds that they represent a large percentage of the inhabitants of the Republic. Therefore I believe that we can accept the constitution of this committee with great assurance. With regard to the scope of the Bill, for me the assurance lies in the fact that the Government already deserves the highest praise for what it has done with regard to low-cost housing. In my opinion extensive provision is also made in the Bill for low-cost housing. The Government can certainly receive the praise that the evidence which exists in residential areas where one finds low-cost housing, is the best testimonial that the Government gives high priority to the construction of low-cost housing and therefore never fails to take this type of housing into account when it envisages legislation of this nature.

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South also made mention of a department for housing affairs. One can support him in this if such an institution would not affect the development of the community. To my mind the department as it exists at the moment, meets all the requirements the hon. member lays down for such a separate department. If one examines what the present department has envisaged in the past, and also envisages now with this Bill, the best proof to me lies in the fact that this department considers housing for all the inhabitants of the Republic as a matter of prime importance. The long title of this Bill is already a demonstration of this. The Bill aims at a better co-ordination of housing construction and a better implementation of housing areas. The best proof for the justification of the Bill lies, in my opinion, in the long title and in the details of the Bill.

Further to what my colleague, the hon. member for False Bay said, I want to express great praise for the Fouché Commission report. The motivation for the appointment of this commission is to my mind yet another piece of evidence of the serious light in which the Government regards housing for the inhabitants of the Republic. If we examine what this commission has achieved in the report, if we consider the people who gave evidence before the commission, the aspects touched on, the thoroughness of the investigation and the positive recommendations with regard to housing arising from this investigation, we see that this commission deserves great praise for the way in which it performed its task. The department also deserves high praise in that they realized the need for such a commission of inquiry. I have to congratulate the department, on behalf of this side of the House, with this step which was taken, and I also have to congratulate the Fouché Commission which made such a thorough investigation. I believe they have performed a herculean task in this regard.

One is struck by the fine housing in South Africa. I am not only referring to housing for the high income groups. If there is something of which I am really very proud, it is the rising standard of housing, also for the lower income groups. I think the Republic of South Africa is unique in the world with regard to the standard and quality of our low-cost housing, especially if one compares it with what one often finds abroad. I refer here to low-cost housing for Whites as well as non-Whites. We can really be proud of the continuous improvement which is taking place in the housing of the lower income group in particular.

We are very proud of the fine housing for all parts of society in South Africa. I concede that there is always room for improvement. More housing is needed, but we shall probably never achieve perfection on this earth. This department and the Government is, however, geared to giving constant attention to the bottlenecks which still exist with regard to housing.

However, one cannot but be impressed by the hundreds, I could almost say thousands, of unexploited building plots in our residential areas. A friend told me of a case on the Witwatersrand where a township development was planned. Thousands of rands were spent on the purchase of that particular piece of land, but for almost three years now they have been struggling to have township development approved there. In the meanwhile interest has had to be paid on the amount that was invested. It is not a giant scheme, but it is nevertheless a substantial amount and private entrepreneurs had to pay interest of R3 000 per month on that little investment of theirs. Eventually the PWV-route cut through that piece of property which they bought for development. That is one of the many cases where one is really struck by the lack of co-operation and co-ordination between the various bodies in the development of a township. For that reason I am very satisfied with this Bill, which not only envisages the better utilization of plots, but also the better utilization of building materials. I am also very satisfied with the co-ordination between the various provinces and between various bodies in a specific province envisaged by this Bill.

I want to express my great appreciation for this legislation. I believe that we also have the support of hon. members on the Opposition side for this Bill, which really is a great step forward in the establishment of housing.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Somerset East, as well as the hon. member for False Bay, made reference to the Fouché Commission and the dedicated manner in which it performed its task. I should like to associate this side with the remarks which have been made. I have personal experience of the dedication of the Fouché Commission and the contribution they have made. However, the hon. member for False Bay in particular said that there is little need for White housing and that the department has in fact fulfilled its obligations in this respect. There is, however, little room for complacency on the part of the Department of Community Development as far as national housing is concerned. I think they still have a long way to go. The fact that the hon. the Minister has said that we shall have to wait until 1983 before the backlog is caught up with, is in itself an admission.

We are dealing here with a Bill of which the intention is co-ordination, in order to go beyond the Department of Community Development and the National Housing Commission. I believe there is much to be said for the points made by the hon. member for Rondebosch during his speech concerning the need for housing. The hon. member for Rondebosch shares the viewpoint of the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South, and has on many occasions told this House that we need a Ministry of Housing in order to coordinate housing in all respects. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South also touched upon the matter of township development. I am sure he speaks from a great deal of experience.

This Bill is based, as the hon. the Minister has said, on recommendation 148 of the Fouché Commission, which in this connection refers to thousands of stands which have remained vacant. It is true that there are thousands of stands vacant. There may be many reasons for this. I think it is obviously due to the economic climate of the country. The obvious reason is that during the boom years township developers developed to such an extent that the demand fell away. I do not know whether this is such a serious thing in itself. I believe the law of supply and demand will dictate the prices to be paid for those vacant stands. The more stands there are available for sale, the cheaper they are going to be.

The hon. the Minister then referred to the next reason, namely the question of financial difficulties. Here again, I do not know how one can guard against the financial difficulties of development companies. We know they have to give guarantees when it comes to the question of the provision of the necessary services such as sewerage, electricity and water by the local authorities. Those guarantees cover them to a certain extent. However, when one has seen township development empires collapse the way they have over the last few years, one does not know exactly what the hon. the Minister has in mind and how he is going to guard against that type of occurrence.

There is also the question of doubtful practice. I am not aware of any doubtful practice regarding the sale of stands. At one stage it was said—and I think it has happened—that a township had been laid out and the stands had been sold before any road development had been undertaken or any provision for sewerage, electricity and water had been made. I think that is a bad practice, but I think the provincial ordinances in all cases have now cured that.

Then there is the question of the need for co-ordination, which is something we support. What I am saying is that although recommendation No. 148 of the Fouché Commission did mention these as reasons for introducing this type of legislation, the hon. the Minister did not elaborate upon these arguments and did not give us any details as to why it was necessary and where problems existed in regard to the matters I have mentioned, other than on the question of the need for co-ordination. We accept that there is a need for housing, and we accept the principle of the need for home ownership. Home ownership is basically a cornerstone of Western civilization and of the security we know. The situation therefore arises that we are not now dealing with any group other than the middle-upper income group, and in this connection we refer to those above the R540 group, where there are five children or more. We refer to those who earn an income of up to R7 200 who can be helped. We refer to those above that limit but who are not in the class of being able to afford to buy wherever they like, because their pockets do not allow them to do so. In Great Britain this is not a strange principle as far as housing is concerned. There the local authority must supply housing to anybody who requests it, be he a pauper or be he a millionaire.

Then there is the question of private enterprise which is dealt with in terms of this Bill. As far as private enterprise is concerned, supply and demand will dictate the needs.

I now come to the question of township development, which I shall deal with shortly, and the question of land use which I shall also touch upon. To achieve these objectives the Bill creates in the first place a Housing Matters Advisory Committee in terms of clause 2, which in turn is to refer to a Housing Policy Council established in terms of clause 9. Much emphasis has been placed on recommendation 148 by the hon. the Minister himself, and he has said that this should not be looked upon as interfering with the autonomy or the rights of, or an encroachment upon the privileges and rights of the provincial councils and local authorities. I think the hon. the Minister mentioned in his speech that he had held a meeting with the four Administrators and that he had got them to agree. I think this may be a case of the lady protesting too much, because what I am saying is that there is a very thin line between co-ordination and direct interference itself. There is a delicate balance vis-a-vis the central Government, as we are constituted here, the provinces and the local authorities on the one side, and private enterprise on the other side.

I see that special mention is made of the Ministry of Planning and the Environment and I think this is a welcome provision, because I believe that there has been a lack of co-ordination between that department and the various provincial administrations, and, in turn, the local authorities themselves. Where, in fact, does one draw the line between the functions of the Department of Planning and the Environment and the functions of the provincial administrations in so far as planning itself is concerned? The functions of the Department of Planning and the Environment should primarily be concerned with national and regional planning, to facilitate data collection for planning purposes, to publish information on trends in the country as a whole and also to state the official policy of the Government in that regard. It should also promote planning and development by encouraging growth points and by providing the necessary infrastructures for private development. The department should not be concerned with planning at the local level, except in so far as the Physical Planning and Natural Resources Act of 1967 is concerned, particularly with regard to section 2 thereof.

To concern itself with local planning would be a waste to the department itself. I do not believe it should concern itself with that at all.

In so far as the provincial administrations are concerned, we now come to the question of physical planning itself. In this connection there are two aspects on which I should like to touch concerning physical planning itself, because they are two clear-cut aspects in themselves. Firstly, there is the control and development of land for various purposes; in other words, commonly referred to as land use in itself. Secondly, there is the provision of essential public services such as transportation, water, light, sanitation and health services, and also the provision of parks and recreational areas and social and cultural amenities.

With regard to town planning itself, we should rather leave that to the local authorities themselves. There is a provision, certainly in one ordinance with which I am familiar, namely the Town and Township Planning Ordinance of the Transvaal, of 1965, which has particular reference to this. I think it is necessary for me to emphasize this point, because this goes to the root of all that I am trying to say today. I quote from section 17, as follows—

For those reasons it is necessary, when we apply regional planning, to find regional planning areas and within a regional area itself it is then necessary to define the metropolitan areas and the growth points. Having said that, I turn specifically now to township planning, because this affects the provincial administrations, local authorities and private enterprise itself. One of the inherent weaknesses in so far as town planning is concerned is the ability and the legal right of the State and the Department of Community Development to promote townships which go against the basic tenets and principles of town planning within the area itself. It has been said that the townships take too long to develop. During the boom times to which the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South referred I know that in the Transvaal it took anything up to eight years before a township could be approved. There are too many provisions in the township planning regulations. As the hon. member for Langlaagte mentioned earlier in the debate, there are something like 46 departments to which township applications must be referred. That is why there were such long delays. In the Transvaal, for example, there is the PWV scheme in terms of which all township development has been frozen. There could be up to 200 townships which are affected by this freezing and which cannot develop. That must not be allowed to happen. Therefore, what we need is a very strong measure of reform. We need a revolutionary approach to township development and approval. What we need to do is to look at some of the recommendations, particularly those made in recommendation 148 of the Fouché Commission report. These recommend that where the guide plan has been determined by regional and physical planning—and a reference was made to Durban and Pietermaritzburg in the Fouché Commission report— the local authority should be allowed to deal with the township development itself and handle the township application on its own. Once the area has been defined and it has been decided where the township is to be developed, I believe we should cut out all this nonsense with regard to the question of the Administrator being responsible for town planning and for the hearing of appeals, which take a long time, and in respect of which the Administrator is a judge and a prosecutor in his own court. We shall possibly also have to consider the situation which will result when, if the hon. the Minister of Coloured Relations is correct, the Government intends abolishing provincial councils. This advisory committee will have to take a very careful look at how township development is going to proceed in the future in the absence of the provincial councils, which may be abolished.

The hon. the Minister has spoken about the need for uniformity. On the question of the need for uniformity I want to issue a warning, because whereas there are certain aspects which may tend to require uniformity, I want to suggest that it is dangerous to have uniformity throughout. What we need is flexibility. When it comes to the question of the size of stands, I do not believe that anyone can determine the size of stands other than the local area itself. A high density report was recently gone into in the City of Johannesburg to decide whether half acres should be cut to quarter acres. It was decided, for example, that these subdivisions should only take place in certain suburbs. In other words, what I am trying to emphasize is that it is purely a local matter. Only very small stands, of less than a quarter of an acre, are allowed for township development on the coast of the Cape, but it may well be that this is not the size of stand that is desirable in other areas. Therefore, let us maintain a degree of flexibility and let us remember that there is a question of supply and demand, especially in the case of details relating to density, bulk, height restrictions, building lines, servitudes, conditions of endowment, etc. Therefore, in the circumstances, I believe that we must look at it from that point of view.

Then there are matters which the advisory committee will have to attend to. There is, for example, the question of sectional title. It has already been stated that a committee has been set up to deal with sectional title. I hope that this committee that has been established will see to it that with the acquisition of sectional title, what I call a Wainer type of swindle will not be allowed to occur again. I hope the committee will be able to see to it that, for example, people who have purchased flats in Hillbrow in terms of the Sectional Titles Act on the understanding that they will become the owners of those flats do not suddenly find that the large sums of money they have paid simply make of them concurrent creditors. I believe that this committee should consider the question as to whether people in such circumstances should not be made preferent creditors so that they can at least have some measure of protection.

Another aspect is the question of the aged. In this respect I want to suggest that whereas the Department of Community Development has catered for White housing up to a certain point the aged are, nevertheless, not being cared for completely. There are many aged people in South Africa today who do not qualify for community housing and who can afford to purchase housing of a higher quality because they belong to the higher income groups. However, they are lonely people. Many of them are widows, divorcees, bachelors and the like, people who need company and who have great difficulty in finding a place to live. In France a scheme was inaugurated in terms of which housing projects made provision for people belonging to this category so that they could be integrated and fitted into a community and not be left aside. The basic idea was to enable them to communicate with younger people, with married people, and to see children at play. They were not to be isolated, but they were to be kept away from loneliness. This is an aspect which, I hope, this advisory committee will look into. With regard to a point made by the hon. the Minister of Finance, I believe that there are certain aspects which need to be looked at, for example, the question of tax aids such as a tax rebate over a period of 10 years calculated on the cost of a house or land. This is being done in Germany and I believe it is an aspect we can also look at. Then, for example, there is the question of an income tax reduction. This is a question of all costs for maintenance of and repairs to houses, if purchased under State-aided schemes, being made deductible for income tax purposes.

Furthermore, there is the question of split housing loans. In the case of the 90% loan given by the Department of Community Development, there are those who exceed the limit of R7 200. They could be assisted by the building societies and the State each providing them with a percentage of the loan required, with the building society providing the greater portion. I was pleased to note in the budget speech of the hon. the Minister of Finance that the plea made over many years for the abolition of transfer duty and transfer fees has now been granted up to a limit of R20 000. I believe the public of South Africa, and especially young married people, will welcome that.

I now want to refer very briefly to the Bill itself. I have made representations and I have placed an amendment on the Order Paper, which will be dealt with during the Committee Stage. In terms of that amendment we will be able to get away from the so-called encroachment upon the spheres of local authorities. Where, for example, recommendations are made by the advisory committee itself, they will be made to the local authority concerned, who will then know about it. It is provided in clause 4 that the committee will have two members of the United Municipal Executive. I must state that I am very happy that the local authorities in South Africa will be represented by two members of the UME. However, that in itself is not enough. If those two members are from Cape Town and Johannesburg respectively, things happening in Port Elizabeth or Durban will not assist them very much. In the circumstances I believe that this representation should cover a wider field. When I plead for a wider choice, I want to reinforce the argument used by the hon. member for Rondebosch that we should not allow this to look like another State committee which merely co-ordinated officials employed by the State, I want us to go wider. In order to go wider, I am going to move during the Committee Stage that the S.A. National Council for Care of the Aged should also be included in clause 4. That is a council which has 160 affiliated bodies attached to it.

The last point which I would like to raise is in connection with clause 12 of the Bill. I believe that the provision that the decisions should be made public is not clearly worded. I believe, in the circumstances, that the hon. the Minister will have to explain how this can be made clear. I hope that the amendment we intend to introduce during the Committee Stage will be accepted.

By and large, although we have expressed certain reservations, we nevertheless support in general the principle of co-ordinating what has to be co-ordinated. We believe that the Government has no room for complacency in its own community development. Although I do not know whether the hon. the Minister is going to accept the amendment which will be moved by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South to delete clause 3(3), I nevertheless want to state that it touches on the very principle of the Bill. I think that what we need here is co-ordination with flexibility and a human approach to provide housing for all the peoples of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to thank hon. members on both sides of the House for their participation in the debate we have been conducting during the past few weeks. I am particularly thankful that all the parties in the House stated emphatically that they are in favour of the principle of this legislation. The principle comprises of course the co-ordination of housing matters. I appreciate this highly and I think it could give rise, during the Committee Stage, to a fruitful discussion of the problems in regard to the co-ordination of housing matters. It is of course true that when all the parties support the principles of a Bill one must occasionally expect to find it difficult to sustain the debate. Consequently this was clearly the case during the Second Reading debate. At times the debate digressed considerably from the subject. Many matters were raised which had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill. However, this could not be helped.

The hon. member for Walmer, for example, discussed the re-organization of the Cabinet. That is a very interesting subject to raise on the right occasion, perhaps when the Vote of the hon. the Prime Minister comes up for discussion. However, the hon. member should really not expect me to make a speech on the subject. The hon. member for Hillbrow spoke very eloquently about the insolvency of certain bigger town planners and township developers. It is of course a matter which is dealt with very thoroughly in the Fouché Commission report. But it is not one of the recommendations directly affecting this legislation. Legislation in that connection will probably be introduced on another occasion. I suggest that we discuss these matters then. We can hold a very interesting discussion on them.

Many of the points which hon. members raised dealt with matters which should really be referred to the advisory committee and to the policy council when these are established. From our point of view, as well as that of other interested parties, I know that I can give hon. members the assurance that those matters will in fact be raised and will in fact be considered. Decisions and advice will not be lacking, either, and we shall have assistance in finding solutions. However, I am grateful that hon. members, through the advice they gave in regard to matters that have to be referred to the committee, emphasized the pressing need for such a body. It also indicates how much work is awaiting such a body, as well as what good results the establishment of such a body will have for all of us.

I could also have had something to say about particular points, of course. I wish I had had the time to be able to do so, for I was really interested in certain specific aspects of the speech made by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South. He spoke about a tunnel which will cost R80 million. This amount will be spent in the course of four or five years. If that tunnel is in fact built, it will result in an amount equal to the money which is being spent on it being saved within a few years. That is what the hon. the Minister of Transport told us. The hon. member compared that with the R16 million, as he called it, which is being made available this year for Bantu housing. I asked him specifically whether he was talking about Bantu housing. Where does the hon. member get that amount of R16 million from?

In the estimates.

Why are only portions of the estimates quoted? It is not only R16 million. I have told hon. members opposite so often already that when it comes to facts, the Parliamentary staff of the Department of Community Development is at their disposal to help them to acquire the facts. We shall not write their speeches for them, nor shall we give them advice, but they can always consult us about the facts and they will receive the utmost willingness to help from my officials. Surely it is not fair to say that there will only be R16 million. What is more, it is not true. It creates a completely erroneous impression of how we approach our affairs.

I said in your estimates.

Wait a minute. There is, it is true, a figure of R16 million in one portion of the estimates, but there is in addition a further R50 million for urban Bantu housing under the Bantu Loan Scheme of R250 million. The hon. member is aware of this. Moreover, there is, under the same scheme, an additional R50 million for homeland citizens. Instead of R16 million, that is already R116 million. If he confines it to the amount in the estimates, surely his argument is meaningless. He is intelligent enough to know that. He was negligent. He forgot about the additional R100 million. Perhaps he did not know because he does not talk to people who do know. He did not know either that in the vote of the Minister of Plural Relations and Development there are further large amounts which have been earmarked for housing in the homelands and elsewhere. I think the hon. member ought to be ashamed of himself for having referred to the amount of R16 million as though this were the extent of the effort on the part of the State and South Africa in this sphere. I do not like criticizing a young member in this way, but he must please consult the experts. They are placed at his disposal. He must make use of them and come forward in this House with the correct facts.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? I discussed the R100 million which he mentioned on a previous occasion. Surely the hon. the Minister knows that I did in fact mention it.

Order! The hon. member may only ask a question.

My question is: Over what period will the R100 million be spent, and is it true that the amount of R16 million appears in this way in your estimates? That is precisely what I said.

The amount of R250 million will be spent over a period of three years and the amount of R100 million …

I was referring to this budget.

Yes, he was referring to this budget.

Look, we should not try to score debating points off one another. The hon. member drew a comparison between the Hex River tunnel and housing and said that we were only making R16 million available for the housing of Black people in South Africa. He can wriggle as much as he wants to now; it remains an unfair comparison, and invalid comparison. I say that he should please do his homework.

I come next to the hon. member for Rondebosch. Although I differ no end with the standpoints in it, I appreciate his speech, because he went to some trouble. He did his homework. He stated his arguments very thoroughly, as one has come to expect of him, and the same applies to his facts. On this occasion he once again raised the question of the squatters. As he has every right to do, he contrasted his standpoint, his policy and his insight with those of my department and my own. He believes that the influx to the cities and the population increase is such that we have no hope of solving the squatter problem.

Not in this way.

The hon. member said we had no hope of doing so. Now he is qualifying it a little. But it is not an important qualification. In any event, he does not see the light. He thinks the problem is a worldwide problem and that, however one looks at it, one will simply have to allow squatting and exercise control here and there, etc. That is his standpoint, but it is not ours. The standpoint of his entire party is one of laissez faire, a standpoint of: Let matters take their course. They believe that one should simply allow an uncontrolled influx of unemployed persons—and I emphasize unemployed persons—to the cities. Our standpoint is a different one. We say that one should not only build houses but should also ensure that the people who are entitled to houses or who claim that they should be given houses in the urban areas, are in the urban areas because they have something to offer there by way of labour, work or usefulness and that there are then homes for them. That is the difference between us. That is why I feel very confident that we shall overcome the squatter problem. He is not very hopeful, but I am. I see that the acting city engineer of Cape Town stated with great confidence that, as things stand at present, he will be able to virtually eliminate the squatter problem in Cape Town during the next 18 months.

In respect of both the Coloureds as well as the Bantu?

I do not know whether this also applies in respect of Coloureds. He was referring only to squatters. I assume that it was the Coloureds. But I am not certain. However, that is what he said. I do not support that view. I adhere to the idea which I expressed two years ago, viz. that it would take approximately seven years from that date, and that means that there are still five years left. I think we shall do it. During the past two years, during which we have to a large extent occupied ourselves with creating the infrastructure for our initiative, we have already reduced the number of squatter dwellings in the Cape Peninsula by 6 000, and this number will increase as the infrastructure is completed and we are able to use the rest of the money and our energy for the actual building of houses. In Mitchell’s Plain for example we shall soon be able to complete 800 houses per month. These are facts. These are tremendous facts. The hon. member and I will simply have to differ on this. If the financial appropriation received by the department remains normal, time will tell whose standpoint was correct, his or mine. I am willing to wait and see.

So am I.

If I consider the general trend in this debate, it actually revolved around two points only. The first was the constitution of the advisory council. Most of the hon. members opposite want it to be a far larger body with greater responsibility on the part of the private sector and certain professional interests. One has a great deal of sympathy for that standpoint, but if such body wants to be effective, it must not be too large. If I look at the amendment of which the hon. member for Hillbrow has already given notice, and if I consider how many other people, if I were to accept the amendment, would say “if they have the right to serve on this council, why not I”, it seems to me as though we are not going to have a council, but a second Parliament.

A fourth Parliament.

Surely that is not the object. I shall not elaborate on that now, because it is clear from the speeches we have heard that this will be the main topic of discussion during the Committee Stage. The amendments in question already appear on the Order Paper. I must say that I am looking forward to discussing them.

In order to help hon. members a little when they begin to think about what they are going to say during the Committee Stage, I just want to draw their attention to one thing. The advisory committee will consist of 13 members, i.e. the chairman and 12 members. The hon. member for Rondebosch has already conceded that four of those members will probably comply with the requirements which he set—I can tell him that they will indeed comply with those requirements. In addition there are two representatives from the United Municipal Executive. As the hon. member for Hillbrow will know, these are people from the business community. They are not officials; they are in reality from the private sector. With that we already have six members. Six of the 12 ordinary members, therefore, are already people who are not drawn from the Government sector. Then there is the chairman of the National Housing Commission. He is a professional quantity surveyor and a leader in his profession. Therefore we already have a majority of members who are not drawn from the Government sector. Then there are the three members whom I appoint and who will be deputy secretaries of the department. Among them there are experts in the professional building sphere. There will also be people from the town planning division of my department. They are leading experts in the sphere of construction planning. There will probably be one person who will be appointed on the grounds of his knowledge on the administrative level. This is only one person at whom criticism may possibly be levelled by hon. members opposite. The advisory committee will therefore, in reality, be a committee of experts, representative of as many aspects as possible, of all the interested parties in the provision of housing in South Africa. I am just mentioning this so that hon. members can bear it in mind when they prepare their speeches for the Committee Stage.

The second matter of importance which they raised was concerned with the demarcation of the sphere in which the advisory committee would be able to operate. Their objection in particular was that clause 3(3) of the Bill would exclude matters falling under the Housing Act and the Community Development Act, and that the committee would have to confine itself to the remaining matters. My good friend, the hon. member for Rondebosch, owing to the influence which is exerted on him in that party, immediately attempted to attach a racial significance to this. Ostensibly we want to allow only the Whites to enjoy the benefits of the advisory committee and the policy council, while we wish to refrain from consulting the non-Whites as far as subeconomic housing and subsidized housing is concerned, and cast them into limbo. Is he not ashamed of himself? The hon. member for False Bay, in a brilliant speech this afternoon, pointed out that during the past few years approximately 17% of assisted housing, if I may call it that, was established by the Department of Community Development and the local authorities. If my hon. friend had taken the trouble to read the Fouché Commission report…

I did read it.

Did he read the schedules?

I did.

Then I just want to draw his attention to schedule 21 in which the percentage of White taxpayers within certain income groups is analysed. He would have seen that 30% of our Whites, i.e. almost one-third of our Whites, earn less than R380 per month and that is the lowest level of the means test in the Housing Act in terms of which people may receive assisted housing. 30% of the Whites qualify. 51% of the income of Whites is less than R540 per month, which is the highest level of the Housing Board means test. However, since they have not stated how large the families are, I cannot make very much of this. But there is something which I can say. Approximately one-third of the Whites are also people who qualify for assisted housing. The housing problems of the other two-thirds will be affected by this Bill. However, one-third fall into the same problem category as the non-Whites, although the hon. member for Rondebosch wants to imply that it will consist of non-Whites only.

No, that is exactly what I did not do.

No, he must not argue now. He said it very clearly. I read his speech, and I discussed the speech with other people who also read it, and it is very clear that that is what he meant.

I shall repeat it.

I can say many other things about this. This Bill was the consequence of the terms of reference given to the commission which instituted an inquiry into low-cost housing, the Fouché Commission, and I just want to remind my hon. friend of what my predecessor said in 1975 (Hansard, Vol. 57, col. 6754)—

And that is true. I quote further—

Six hundred of them, I may add—

This low-cost housing was already being excluded in the terms of reference of the commission. Hon. members did not once complain about it. They never adopted a critical attitude to it, but now that proposals have been made, they suddenly wish to see with the work of the commission in a very general light and want us to include things which were with good reason excluded at the time—and apparently with the acceptance of the Opposition. The commission itself examined the issue again to see whether its terms of reference should be regarded in more general terms, and in paragraph 3 of the report of the commission it is stated—

These are low-cost dwellings—

This Bill does not deal with that kind of housing either. It deals only with the problems with which we are faced when we have to cope with housing for people who fall outside the means test limit of the Housing Act.

The hon. member for False Bay pointed out what skill and expertise were at the disposal of the department and the local authorities owing to institutions such as the National Housing Commission and the Community Development Board. I am thinking for example of Prof. Louw, the chairman of the Housing Board, a man who in private practice is a quantity surveyor, Prof. Maritz, who established the chair for building cost calculation at the University of South Africa and Mr. Gildenhuys and Mr. Rothmann who are experts in the field of local authorities and housing matters. Mr. Gildenhuys was in fact the director of housing for the city council of Pretoria and is an architect by profession. So I can continue. We have the expert advice and we have the experience, and I say, too, in all humility, that we have the results. We have the results. What is happening in the field of low-cost housing in South Africa is something of which all of us can be proud.

But why must we have two commissions?

Since we have a series of problems which is limited to high-cost housing—if I may call it that—why should we now drag in low-cost housing? The two are completely separate problems. These are separate problems which have to be looked into, separate problems which have to be solved. One simply cannot treat those aspects alike. We have the problems.

The hon. member for Hillbrow helped me this afternoon. He said one of the greatest problems was the fact that there were town planners who for various reasons could not stand up to adversity during the depression years and consequently went under and caused many people to suffer great hardship. Problems of that kind do not exist in the sphere of low-cost housing. Why should we drag in these people to give attention to those problems while they are already doing brilliant work and I hope will do even better work in future in the sphere of sub-economic housing.

I want to ask hon. members to accept—and I think they do accept it, if I understood their speeches correctly—that this Government is absolutely determined, provided providence is merciful to us and provided we can find the means, to house the people of South Africa, for whom we are responsible, decently and thoroughly and to ensure that families live a decent life. We have already demonstrated that we are prepared to make sacrifices to this end. We are prepared to adopt extraordinary measures, such as the recent loan which we obtained from the banks. We shall not come to this House with a measure which defeats that object or makes its attainment difficult. I can assure hon. members of that.

If we accept the criticism of the Opposition, i.e. that this particular advisory committee and policy council should also venture into the sphere of subsidized low-cost housing, we would only be detracting from the work which has to be done in the sphere of the economic higher-cost housing in which we have in recent years in particular experienced such enormous and grievous problems. We must separate the two aspects, because the problems which on the higher level have caused both them and us concern, do not exist on the lower level. Let us then take steps, as envisaged in this Bill, to solve the problems which exist only on the higher level and, I hope, eliminate them as well by creating machinery which is geared to the level of the problem. That is the object and principle of the Bill.

In view of the criticism which has been levelled at me in the speeches on the opposite side, I want to reiterate that the support in principle by the Opposition is appreciated very sincerely indeed by all of us on this side.

Mr. Speaker, I move—