Mr. Speaker, in connection with the business of the House for next week, I want to inform hon. members that the additional estimates of the Railways will be discussed this coming Monday, while the additional estimates of the Post Office will come up for discussion next Wednesday. Tuesday and Friday of next week are private members’ days. During the remainder of the week we shall proceed with the business as it appears on the Order Paper.

†The Second Reading of the Part Appropriation Bill will be dealt with on 26 February and the days following. The Third Reading of the Part Appropriation Bill will be taken on 8 March.

*The additional estimates of the hon. the Minister of Finance will come up for discussion on Monday, 5 March.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

The basic task of agriculture, seen from a purely national point of view, is to feed the 25 million people in the country properly. As far as the matter of supplying food is concerned, we find ourselves in a particularly strong position. Our population growth is 2,6% whereas the growth in the physical volume of agricultural products over the past 15 years was more than 4%. Therefore, as far as the matter of supplying food is concerned, agriculture was ahead of the population growth. Food is not only freely available, but also available in a large variety. This variety renders possible the selective use of food. Therefore, we are able in this the health year to prescribe healthy diets to our people by guiding them in this regard. The supply of food has an important effect on national health. A person who has intimate knowledge of agriculture, will be able to see that our supply position is extremely vulnerable, because we lose soil annually. During the past five years we lost approximately 600 000 ha per annum.

We are inherently poor in agricultural land. Only 3,4% of our arable land has a high potential. Agricultural research will, therefore, have to enjoy top priority in this country. In this regard we may congratulate the Government. The 11 research institutes are doing very good work in the field of agricultural research.

In order to see agricultural development in its full perspective, one must also examine the various cost structures in the industry, because they can have a strong influence on the task of agriculture to supply food. There are three important sectors involved in the supply of food, viz. the primary sector, the processing sector and the consumer sector. I wish to dwell briefly on the cost structures of these three sectors.

The first sector I wish to deal with, is the consumer sector. Consumer indexes in South Africa indicate that food is becoming of greater significance in consumer expenditure. With 1970 as basis, the consumer index during 1977-’78 was 203,9 for all consumer items, but for food the index was 216. It can, therefore, be said that food prices are rising faster than the price of the rest of the consumer goods. The consumer is extremely sensitive to these increases. This is so because we have had economic growth in South Africa during the past few years, coupled with the development of a higher standard of living and a higher standard of eating habits and food consuming habits, which in some cases incline to the most luxurious. Recently, with inflation and the recessionary conditions we have been experiencing, the position is such, however, that the buying power of the consumer’s salary has not risen as rapidly as the adjustments in his salary. In other words, the consumer’s ability to meet the rising costs, has diminished. This obliges him to save in some way. Because of his standard of living he has certain fixed obligations such as rent, instalments on his motor car, his television set, etc. Practice has shown that his normal way of saving is to start cutting down on various foodstuffs. The result is that he begins to develop a price resistance. Usually he is angry with the primary producer or the control boards, as we experienced two years ago. However, we find a general decline, inter alia, in the consumption of durable foodstuffs. The whole reaction then works like a shock wave throughout the whole food chain with all its associated sectors.

We must, therefore, be very careful in agriculture and note the effects of the various cost structures on the consumer. We know there are protective measures in this regard, for example, the regulating role which the control boards play. Sometimes there are many objections about the costs, but this is not a problematic aspect. The total cost of such regulating functions—the figure was mentioned in this House last year—is a mere 60 cents per capita per annum.

I shall now deal with the middle sector, and this is a very highly developed industry in agriculture. In the first place I mention storage. It is State and Government policy to store our grain in bulk Millions of rands are invested in this field. There is the processing industry as well, which consists of the milling industry, the baking industry, factories and abattoirs. I may just mention that it is claimed that once the building of Cato Ridge has been completed, the total investment in slaughter facilities in South Africa will exceed R200 million. This sector, because of its high fixed capital investment, is extremely sensitive to the under-utilization of its capacity, with the resulting cost rises. Consumer resistance can result in the under-utilization of this capacity but, interestingly enough, even consumer preferences can result in a tremendous underutilization of this capacity. We experienced that when the consumer preferred yellow margarine to butter. Then there were a number of creameries which were of no further use. Their production value was virtually nothing.

Now I shall deal with the third sector, and that is the primary sector where the farmer is the entrepreneur. He has made an investment in agriculture which is at the moment in the region of R20 000 million. If, however, we analyse his ability to recover costs, we see the existing tendency is that he is not receiving the benefit of rising food prices. If we examine the indices and the statistics in this regard, we see that five years ago the farm value of each rand spent on food, was 55 cents. Last year it dropped to 47 cents for each R1. The consumer must, therefore, not become angry with the wrong people when the food prices rise. This rise does not always reach the farmer.

When examining the recovery position in the primary industry, we see that production costs have risen tremendously in recent years. Between 1970-’71 and 1978 the prices of products rose by 105%. As opposed to that the prices of farming requisites, i.e. the farmer’s input to be able to produce, for example fertilizer, fuel and tractors, rose by 134%. The result is that a disparity is developing between costs and income. There is only one solution and that is that the farmer’s efficiency must be increased. How can he achieve that? He is doing that by increasing his production, and he is, in fact, succeeding in that. During the period of 10 years up to and including last year his production grew by 30%. In crop farming his production grew by more than 50%. What is important, is that his efficiency should increase still further, because he has to attain the maximum yield from less land which has been made available to him. He has to utilize more effective scientific methods in order to gain optimum production. That in turn requires higher inputs, because the more scientific the production systems become, the larger the capital inputs become. I shall come back to this. Let us take fertilizer as an example. During the past 10 years the use of fertilizer has increased by 101% whereas the increase in its price has reached approximately 140%. Despite these attempts by the farmer, despite his increased productivity and efficiency and the maximal utilization of the land at his disposal, he just cannot win against cost increases.

What are the effects? Over the past few years no capital formation has taken place in agriculture. The burden of debt has increased as follows: In 1976 it was R2 007 million; in 1977, R2 300 million; and indications are that it could amount to R3 000 million this year. Figures issued by the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure indicate a tremendous increase in the number of applications for the consolidation of debts.

The more expensive inputs by the farmer for effecting increased productivity have also resulted in an increase in his risks. What worries me, is that it can happen, since we have reached such a situation, that our economy may degenerate into a type of subsistence economy. That is very dangerous. Secondary industry, too, is affected by this, because the reduction in raw materials results in an under-utilization of its capacity. As a result of the availability of foodstuffs the prices are going to increase for the consumer as well, and this will have an effect on other sectors of the economy.

In the last instance I wish to examine the role of the Government as regards these dangerous cost structures. The existing method being employed is to make provision in the budget for certain sectors in agriculture to receive subsidies. However, we have the unfortunate situation in this country that there is a stigma attached to the word “subsidy”. To people the word “subsidy” implies a subeconomic condition in a particular industry and an industry does not wish to be labelled in that way. We are also finding it among financiers. In Government circles the word “subsidy” is regarded as swear word. Our problem in agriculture is one of cost. It is dry one year and the next we may suffer flood damage. I want to say, however, that this cost problem is just as dangerous as a drought problem or even a flood problem. We are saddled with a cost problem.

I want to examine some of the methods being applied to meet this cost problem. My seconders will also mention several of these methods to this House.

In the first place there are a few requirements which have to be met. There must be a correct placement of supporting measures within this food chain which I have tried to describe. Measures must also be generous; one must not be niggling. Measures which are applied, must be effective and generating in a particular industry. When we examine the price stabilization funds, we see that we reserved R151 million in the previous budget for consumer stabilization of food products. Last year this amount dropped to R105 million, which is, however, still generous. But if we examine the price stabilization of the most primary inputs in agriculture such as, inter alia, fertilizers, we see that the amount was R15,4 million as far back as 1968. Last year’s budget made provision for an amount of R15 million, whereas there was an increase in volume of 101% over the same period. In conjunction with that, the cost increase has been such that the fertilizer account in South Africa will amount to more than R300 million this year. If one adds to that the position of the appropriation which agricultural lime is to receive, and take into account the latest increase of 14% in the price of fertilizer, one finds that this has virtually eliminated the cost-reducing effect of the subsidy. The question arises whether one should not greatly enlarge the auxiliary measures in respect of a primary agriculture input like fertilizer. Because the producer prices of the most important agricultural products are controlled, the cost-reducing effect must reach the consumer. In other words, this effect makes itself felt along the entire chain.

The second advantage attached to this, is that the risk is reduced. If the risk is reduced, the possibility of a more scientific input is created. Scientific production systems are expensive. Today it is no longer a question of one buying a bag of fertilizer and simply scattering this on the ground; one must know how to apply it. One must do soil analyses and be aware of the chemical composition of the soil. These, however, are expensive undertakings; therefore, the lower the costs in this regard, the higher the farmer’s ability to do scientific inputs in order to effect the maximal yield in this way.

The third advantage inherent in this assistance is that it is aimed less at a specific commodity since everybody is a consumer of it. One of the objections raised with reference to subsidies in particular, namely that an imbalance is created by one commodity being stimulated at the expense of another, is removed and as a result this danger is now being eliminated.

Before we terminate subsidies, I think it is essential that we should first investigate thoroughly the method used in respect of subsidies. I think that the development of agriculture and all its various sectors has become much more sophisticated recently. I think it is necessary for us to examine our subsidy methods so as to ascertain whether we are able, by means of other methods and objectives in our subsidy systems, to effect greater stimulation in the agricultural industry as a whole.

Now I want to discuss the price policy. In South Africa we have a control system by means of which prices are controlled and in which production costs of agricultural products are recognized. The problem is, however, that in the short term cost increases eliminate the advantages of our price policy. Price adjustments alone cannot solve the problem, because in agriculture one is faced with a strong and indeterminable risk factor. It is no use being able to receive a fantastic price for a product if, in a year such as this, one has nothing to sell at that price.

Risk, therefore, plays a particularly big role. Everything cannot be remedied by means of prices. Furthermore, we cannot increase the prices of agricultural products to any large extent in any one year, because the shock effect on the consumer sector will be tremendous and that, in turn, will have a generating influence on the cost spiral throughout the whole economy. We must, therefore, examine this risk factor, and it is a particular characteristic of agriculture which is not always present in other sectors of the economy.

There are other methods whereby we can eliminate the risk. There is, for example, insurance and we also have in mind financing. In this regard I want to say at once that in my opinion the financing system in South Africa should also be adapted to a more modern production system in agriculture.

In conclusion, Government assistance and Government responsibility is practised in the Western world. I see in a magazine that the USA contributed $7,9 billion to its maize and wheat industries last year. The USA is known as one of the most developed agricultural countries in the world. Therefore Government assistance is not unknown in agriculture; there is nothing wrong with it.

Our agriculture is basically sound. I think we have the farmers, we have a processing and secondary field, we have consumers who are well organized as far as agriculture is concerned, but we must prevent the cost problem of which I have been speaking, from developing into a food problem in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to participate in this debate after the hon. member for Bethal. It is abundantly clear that farming is a subject of real importance to him and that he delivered a very well-prepared speech which was aimed at doing justice to the farmer, because, whilst it is true that the agricultural industry as a production industry is sound—in other words, it is very clear that we provide sufficient and more than sufficient food for South Africa— at the same time it is also true that the farmer, as far as his economy and finances are concerned, is not in a strong position at all. At the agricultural congress—I will not quote—numerous draft resolutions about this very question of cost increases and lack of production prices for the farmer were placed on the agenda and discussed.

Let us examine the farmer’s economic position in South Africa during the year ended 3 July 1978. His gross income during that period dropped by 4% from approximately R3 566 million to R3 413 million. At the same time his net income showed a drop of approximately 19%. This drop of R326 million in net income can to a large extent be ascribed to high production costs. Over most factors of those production costs the farmer had no control; they were completely beyond his control. The following major price increases occurred—and I shall mention only a few of the most important. The price of fertilizer increased by 14% during that period; that of fodder by 17%; machinery by 13%; tractors by 19% and spare parts by 11%. As I said, these price increases are to a large extent beyond the control of the farmer and are also to a large extent inflationary. As against an average increase of 12% in the price of all farming requirements, the farmer’s income from his product has risen by a mere 3%. The miracle is that there are still so many enthusiastic and industrious farmers today, particularly against such a background.

By way of illustration I should like to single out one or two agricultural products to show how serious some of the problems are with which the farmers have to contend in some areas. I have pointed out that fodder prices rose by 17%. Now we find that the producer prices of the largest consumers of fodder, i.e. the dairy farmer and the slaughter stock farmer, dropped by 1% in the course of that year. The largest single fodder item is, of course, maize, and it is interesting to note that the maize price rose by 12% in that year. That must be mentioned because in this debate we are seeking areas where price rises can be controlled. Of all the agricultural products maize is the only one of which the price has kept pace with the increases in the prices of agricultural requirements. The price of wheat remained unchanged that year and the price of fruit increased by a mere 2%. I must concede, however, that the figures which have been used to illustrate these increases and decreases percentage-wise are valid for the agricultural year ending 30 July and I understand that this date can sometimes be slightly misleading. Now I wonder—while we are discussing agriculture—whether one should not propose that the agricultural year should rather end at the end of March. That would obviate uncertainty with regard to which figures are applicable to which period, because according to the report of the S.A. Agricultural Union, it appears to them, when they try to put the situation in perspective, that there is uncertainty about certain increases, decreases and percentages which they used. They try to put the situation in perspective by saying that the net income of the farmer during the period of 12 months ending 31 March has increased by approximately 1,2%. This does represent an increase, but an increase of 1,2% is unacceptable and remains disquieting. One now asks oneself what the prospects for the next agricultural year are. In this regard I wish to read out a quotation from the publication of the S.A. Agricultural Union. The director of the S.A. Agricultural Union states—

It is clear, therefore, that this debate is also to a large extent concerned with the debate which has taken place among the members of organized agriculture, as reported and as indicated by certain items on the agenda at their meetings. If, however, we examine the prospects for the coming year, we notice that we have started off with further price increases. There has been, for example, a rise of 17% in the price of diesel, and a further price rise of 14% in the case of fertilizer. This price increase alone will cost the farmer a further R39 million this year, while the increase in the price of diesel will cost the farmer a further R35 million this year. Now the question arises what can be done. Which cost increases can be controlled and which cost increases are simply beyond the control of agriculture and of the Government?

I should like to make a few proposals. In the first place I should like to propose, if it is in fact necessary to have a fixed maize price—and I am not arguing about its necessity—that the marginal maize-producing areas should be excluded and that the farmers in those areas should be encouraged to change over to and to concentrate on cultivated dry land pasture for the purpose of stock breeding, which is pasture-intensive, but which requires little labour and mechanization. That is the proposal I wish to make. It would mean that only our best maize-producing areas would be used and that we would thus be able to control our unit prices to some extent.

In the second place I should like to propose, because I suggest that stock farming be encouraged for both slaughter and dairy purposes, that these two industries be stabilized. In the total agricultural sector there is, in my opinion, no single problem as great as the meat problem of South Africa. Not only are slaughter facilities, in my opinion, over-centralized, but their utilization is also uneconomical. If one should construct a factory in the private sector at a cost of a few million rand, in the normal course of affairs that factory would certainly be used for more than one work shift per day. One would therefore expect abattoirs to be in operation for 24 hours a day in order to utilize them fully. It would therefore seem that we are not only over-centralized, but that we may also have created too many slaughter facilities compared with the rate of our stock increase and our meat requirements which have to be met.

That is a good plan, but the hygiene people will not allow it.

I should like the hon. the Minister then to react to this particular problem. At the same time there is the middle-man in the cattle industry, who makes tremendous profits. The farmer does not get the price which he deserves to get for his primary product and the housewife pays through the nose. During 1978 the farmer received one per cent less for his product than the previous year. In the dairy industry, too, there are tremendous problems. Today less milk is drunk, less butter is eaten and less cheese is used than for example 30 to 40 years ago, and who will deny that milk, particularly cow’s milk, is the healthiest product one could possibly think of?

What do you have against goat’s milk?

Through the years the dairy industry and the Government have allowed dairy products, one of our best and healthiest assets, to be replaced by non-dairy products in an underhand way, by riding on the back of the dairy product.

I should very much like to co-operate with anybody or person and even with the hon. the Minister of Agriculture, with anybody who can assist in rectifying this situation. We cannot allow non-dairy products to take over at an ever-increasing rate under pretext that dairy products are unhealthy. For thousands of years mankind has accepted that milk and cheese are there for its health. But now other products are being allowed to ride in on the back of dairy products and to replace them.

In the third place I wish to propose that the Government change its policy to provide for a much larger internal market. One of our problems lies in the fact that we have 25 million people in South Africa. A large percentage of them, as middle-class citizens with a middle-class income, are not really in a position to consume what agriculture can provide. If one considers that by the end of this century we will have approximately 55 million people in South Africa, the question can be asked whether we can imagine the potential size of the consumer market if all the citizens of South Africa are stable South Africans with a stable income who believe that they are going to live in South Africa permanently. That will be of tremendous assistance to the agricultural sector.

In the fourth place I should like to propose that everything possible be done to improve our training facilities for agriculture. I wish to avail myself of this opportunity to congratulate those people who are responsible for allowing a few Coloured people to attend Elsenburg Agricultural College. That is a good decision and I hope that we shall see much more of this type of thing in future, in other words, where Brown, White and Black are trained together in the agricultural sector in order to make better use of our facilities.

In the fifth place I should like to propose that Escom’s electricity supply in the agricultural sector be revised. The introduction of power points, even on farms in the Boland which are not situated far from the central lines, is an extremely expensive process. Facilities such as the limited water which we have cannot be exploited as we should like to if Escom must be paid such high prices.

You are delivering a good speech, my friend.

Something will have to be done to render more assistance to the farmers. I should like to suggest—I did it last year too—that where the Government renders financial aid to a farmer, notwithstanding how big or small he is—it is not asking too much to expect that farmer to give a proper record of his farming activities to the bodies from which he has borrowed money, viz. the Land Bank or some other agricultural organization. That will ensure that someone who requires financial assistance will be kept on the right course as far as his agricultural management is concerned. I am not casting a reflection on the farmers. They are farmers and not accountants. It will, however, reassure the farmer if he knows that his system of recording is of such a nature that at the end of the year he knows exactly where he stands, seen from an economic as well as a production point of view.

Mr. Speaker, before I react to the speech of the hon. member for Wynberg, he must allow me to congratulate the hon. member for Bethal on the motion he moved. This is an appropriate time for us to discuss these matters and therefore I also want to congratulate him on the excellent way he stated his case.

I want to say to the hon. member for Wynberg that we shall have to be very careful not to create the impression that we only want to look after the interests of the farmer with this motion. The motion says, inter alia, that note should be taken of the Government’s responsibility in regard to a general lowering of cost structures. Therefore the motion deals not only with the producer, but with a general lowering of cost structures.

In Die Burger of yesterday there was a report according to which the Housewives’ League had requested to speak to the Minister of Agriculture about, inter alia, the prices of meat, maize, milk and bread, the co-operative system in the egg industry and the marketing system for fresh fruit and vegetables. It is reported that they will see the hon. the Minister on 28 February. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for this step of the housewives because I am a consumer as well. All of us are consumers. We know that we are dealing here with rising costs with regard to the matters mentioned here. Everyone is affected by that. It does not matter whether one is a primary producer, an industrialist or a member of Parliament, because everyone is affected by the problem of rising cost structures. I have sympathy with the housewives who want to see the Minister about this matter. However, I also have a lot of sympathy with the hon. the Minister, because the problem he has to solve is really not an easy one. Likewise I sympathize with other hon. Ministers involved in cost structures. This is an involved but very important problem. We should take note of this problem in our country.

Further to the speech of the hon. member for Bethal, I want to pay attention to the question of financing in the agricultural industry. Agriculture has become a major industry and the financing of agriculture is a very important subject in its own right. It would be a good thing for us to discuss financing in more detail at some stage. In the short time at my disposal I should like to express a few thoughts about the cost of financing. The hon. member for Bethal referred in passing to our form of financing and expressed the opinion that it might be somewhat obsolete. It is true that we shall have to adjust our finance policy to modern circumstances and needs. We should not belittle the role of the Land Bank in the financing of agriculture. On the contrary, we have only the highest appreciation for what the Land Bank is doing for agricultural financing. Let us look only at the following few things. In 1977— and I quote this from the latest report of the Land and Agricultural Bank at my disposal— the Land Bank granted 2 054 long-term loans for an amount of R72,4 million to farmers. However, if one sees this as a percentage of the total amount invested in long-term funds, one realizes that it is not such a very large amount. Such long-term loans are, of course, loans for the purchase of land, the redemption of mortgages, the consolidation of debt, fixed improvements, the purchase of stock and equipment, etc. I am not going to enlarge on this. In the same year the Land Bank also loaned R15,9 million directly to farmers in the form of short- and medium-term loans.

The most important role of the Land Bank in agricultural financing, however, is in my opinion the financing of agricultural cooperatives. This is mainly done by way of cash credit loans, which in 1977 amounted to the vast sum of R1 941 million. This is a vast amount; it is almost R2 milliard. However, in agriculture we are dealing with an enormous industry with an enormous task, i.e. the provision of food to the population. This loan of R1,9 milliard provided by way of the cooperatives to agriculture also indicates an enormous cost item for the industry. I am referring to the interest payable on the outstanding loans. The co-operatives have to recover the interest on these loans from the members, the producers, and this becomes part of the production costs. In fact, this is a very important part of the production costs. As the financial position of producers deteriorates—and it is deteriorating—they become more and more dependent on credit from their co-operatives. Accordingly, the interest factor becomes more and more important and pressing. What is tragic, however, is the fact that it is precisely the man who is having a hard time, the man who has to use the credit, who is troubled most by this cost item. He has to pay the largest amount of interest. I quote from page 30 of the report of Land and Agricultural Bank of South Africa, where it is stated that—

It is a very important statement which is made there. If one analyses it, one realizes that it is a statement which penetrates very deeply into our whole structure of agricultural financing. There is, however, something else that is very alarming, and I know what I am talking about when I say this. The percentage of members’ debts to our co-operatives, debts being transferred from one production year to the next, is ever increasing. Not only is it increasing; it is increasing at an alarming rate. In normal circumstances this transferred debt has to be met by the co-operative from its own resources. Usually the co-operative does not have the funds at its disposal, and there are reasons for this. The co-operative is not in a position to build up large reserves. That, however, is a subject in itself; I do not have the time now to discuss it. Therefore it either has to pay the debt out of its own resources or it has to obtain a loan from a commercial bank to provide it. The cash credit loan which the co-operative obtains from the Land Bank is a seasonal loan which has to be paid back after the crop has been harvested. However, if its members cannot pay it, the co-operative cannot pay the Land Bank either and the cooperative has to find the money somewhere else, usually at high interest rates, interest rates which are so high that the industry cannot afford them at the moment. The high rates at which the co-operative has to borrow additional money from outside have to be transferred to its members, because it has to provide the transferred debt for the members. Once again we have the situation that the man who cannot meet his obligations at the end of the harvest season, and who has a transfer debt, is burdened by his co-operative with an interest rate which is above normal. The cooperative has no option in this regard. It simply has to do it. It cannot finance its transfer debt at the normal interest rate. It has to pass on to its member the higher interest rate on the money it has borrowed from outside. We can very easily criticize the cooperatives for granting too much credit to their members, but I want to state today that as a result of the cost increases indicated here, the short-term capital requirements, as I indicated last year in a private motion in this House, have increased so phenomenally that even the farmer who never made use of credit facilities is now being forced to make increasing use of the credit facilities at his cooperative if he wants to stay in production. The farmer’s profit margin has diminished to such an extent that he can no longer build up a cash reserve. I hope to return to this if I have the time. However, it seems to me that I am going to run out of time.

In extraordinary circumstances like the recent drought in the Western Province, when the transfer debts at the co-operative are abnormally high, they can request the Land Bank to extend the term of payment of the short-term accounts to enable them, in deserving cases, to grant their members more time to repay the production loans. Production loans by the Land Bank, however, are meant only for the acquisition of so-called production means, e.g. seed, fertilizer, fuel and certain spare parts, and to have certain repairs done. The average farmer, however, also has other farming expenses. No extension can be given for the repayment of loans of this nature. Such loans are payable immediately. The co-operative has to pay it to the Land Bank and then recover it from its member. Where it is going to get the money for that I do not know. We shall have to provide for this remaining part of the member’s debt which has no bearing on so-called production means. It is, of course, a function of the State to help with special loans to keep these people in production. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture should speak to his colleague, the hon. the Minister of Finance, about this matter. In fact, I think he has already spoken to him about this.

Too often.

In this regard we have to get an additional source of financing, or else I am afraid that many of the farmers who are now in this dilemma as a result of drought and rising costs will be forced from their land. The commercial banks in the private sector are becoming panicky. The overdrafts of members are being closed.

If there is an indication that the farmer has had a good harvest, the commercial bank nags the co-operative and says: “You cannot take everything which this farmer has produced; I also want a part, because otherwise I am going to clear him out.” The co-operative is under an obligation to the Land Bank. It has to pay over to the Land Bank the yield from the products the farmer delivers to him. I foresee that we are going to have serious problems in future. Our farmers cannot farm while they are suffering as a result of these enormously high interest rates. Sometimes I want to call the interest rates some banks charge robbery rates.

For that reason I think that it is also the duty of this whole House to give this motion its strong support. We must look at the possibility of a lowering of cost structures and we must also look very specifically at the cost of financing. We must try to provide capital to the industry at such an interest rate that the farmer will also be able to make a living.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to discuss a subject we have already discussed before. I want to compliment the hon. member for Bethal on a very well motivated speech. In the light of our experience during the previous week, I think it is wonderful that we can now agree on a number of points. I agree with the hon. member who has just sat down that the hon. the Minister should actually consult with his colleagues. Maybe he can get on that Harley Davidson of his that we have read about last night and roar into a Cabinet meeting, saying: “Wag ’n bietjie; ons gaan nie praat nie. Ek wil net praat oor wat ons boere nodig het en moet kry.”

I think the hon. the Minister has brought about an atmosphere of serenity in this House concerning the agricultural world. He has taken politics out of the discussions, and it surely is a very sound state of affairs when the hon. the Minister can quite openly and honestly listen to arguments and suggestions being made by members of all the parties. It is good that we can openly discuss agricultural matters without any ill-feelings across the floor of the House.

The hon. member for Mooi River has in a previous speech put forward and motivated exactly the same suggestion as has now been made by the hon. member for Bethal. Their suggestion is that the subsidies on our products should be applied at the input level in the agricultural field. The hon. member for Mooi River will elaborate at greater length on this when it is his turn to speak.

I want to put forward some suggestions of my own regarding the Government’s responsibility towards the farmer and, for that matter, the housewife as well. We all know that a parlous state of affairs prevails in agriculture. The farmer’s plight has been highlighted by the hon. the Minister on television last night. I think it is exceptionally serious, but I do not think the housewife in Johannesburg and other big cities realizes quite how serious it is. Over the last few years the cattle farmers and the sheep farmers have been told to produce more beef and mutton on their pastures. We have done that. Production is not the problem; we can produce for Africa in this country, but we cannot produce at the cost structures that are prevalent in today’s market. Cost escalations will just not cease. Let us look at a few examples: The cost of diesel has doubled, the cost of tractors, implements and fertilizer has trebled, the cost of slaughtering animals has quadrupled and the railage cost of moving animals to the abattoirs or elsewhere, has gone up five times in the last few years. But what has happened to the farmer? We often see in the Newton figures what is considered as a farmer’s income. This is not so. What the farmer is actually getting is vastly different after one has deducted the cost of slaughtering the animal. One must be careful not to regard market figures as being what the farmer is actually receiving for his product One must also take into account his costs in getting the animal off his farm and getting it slaughtered. I believe this is a point which must be stressed for the information of the housewife and the public at large. Those figures are not relevant and, furthermore, since 1974 the farmer marketing cattle has had virtually no increase whatsoever while other costs have escalated out of all proportion.

In the motion of the hon. member for Bethal he questions the responsibility of the Government. We all know what the situation is. It is bad. But how do we correct it? If I were in the hon. the Minister’s shoes or in the department’s shoes I would look at five major points where the Government could take action to assist the production of food in this country.

First of all I would phase out all the specific and direct forms of subsidies and replace them with subsidies directly to the farmers on items such as fertilizer, railage, fuel and Escom power. We talk about credit and about the man who is paying tremendous loan interest rates, but if one can cut his costs at the lowest level one does not have to worry about him having to borrow money at these exorbitant rates. I believe we have to look right at the root of the situation.

Secondly, I would like to scrap all direct and indirect forms of tariffs, taxes and duties that are applied to items purchased by the farmers. These taxes and tariffs could very easily be eliminated along the way. The hon. the Minister of Finance might complain, but if the farmers are profitable they will be able to give it all back again in the form of income tax. At least one would be lowering the cost structures at the lowest levels.

The third point I should like to suggest is the removal of all restrictive and legislative measures that inhibitit the sale of farm produce. I shall come back to this point later in my speech.

Fourthly, I would allocate very large sums of money to investigate and open new avenues of sales and to establish new markets as well as to improve existing markets. In addition, as the previous speaker has mentioned, there is the question of sufficient storage facilities and the provision of additional areas where food can be held over for a period of time so that it can be sold at a later stage on the market, thereby stabilizing the market.

My fifth point is an item which I discussed at length last year, viz. the advertising, promoting and stimulating the sale of farm produce.

The hon. member for Mooi River will elaborate on the first two items which I have mentioned, viz. subsidies and the method of changing the subsidies so that the farmer can receive them at the lower level, thereby benefiting the housewives in that she would not have to pay for the doubling and trebling of costs all along the line, via the middleman on all the costs and taxes which are incurred at the basic level of input.

The second point on which I shall not elaborate too much is the scrapping of taxes and duties. This would be of tremendous benefit to the housewives as well as to the farmers. With regard to my third point, the removal of restrictive regulations, I should like to quote what was said last year during the agricultural debate (Hansard Vol. 75, col. 256)—

That statement was made by the new hon. Deputy Minister and I totally agree with him in that respect Restrictive measures are in fact inhibiting the sale of a number of products. Another restrictive factor is restrictions in regard to health. The hon. the Minister also said earlier this morning that health restrictions were inhibiting sales. The farmers of Natal held a very wonderful farmers’ day on my farm in Natal and 1 300 people sat there hearing the hon. the Minister say that we are still going to die of hygiene in this country.

Hear, hear!

It is a problem. I think our restrictions in regard to health are such that we cannot afford them any longer …

They are quite unnecessary anyway.

As far as pasteurization is concerned, the hon. the Minister proposed a very good scheme for selling milk to Blacks in their various areas. Why does that milk have to be pasteurized? Surely one can check the farm to establish whether it is TB-free, CA-free, check the hygiene and send the tanker directly from the farms straight into the Black areas. By doing this, not only will the Blacks benefit, but the farmer as well, because more milk will be sold. The sale of farm products to the Blacks in their own areas could be enhanced if we could drop the restrictive conditions which apply to the sale of farm products. For example, cabbages, milk and various other products could be sold to these people direct. The farmers should be allowed to enter these areas. At the moment they cannot. In regard to the sale of meat, the hon. the Minister has mentioned that he is going to scrap the rule that meat may not be sold in cafes. We agree with this. We feel we can assist him in this and we certainly advise him to continue to lessen the restrictive provisions which place a tremendous burden on the farmer.

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I want to congratulate the hon. members who have participated in the debate on their contributions, especially the hon. member for Bethal and the hon. member for Malmesbury …

Not me?

I say that I congratulate “especially” those two on the way in which they opened the debate and highlighted some basic principles very pertinently. There are certain aspects that the two hon. Opposition members have mentioned which do deserve attention and there are other fundamental aspects on which I disagree with them. In this regard I am thinking about a specific statement of the hon. member for Wynberg, i.e. that marginal areas where maize is grown should be defined and ruled out so that they no longer produce maize. With all respect, to define a marginal area is, in my opinion, perhaps as difficult as to define the consensus in the PFP policy. It is not easy to mark off an area and to define it as a marginal zone. I shall deal with this more specifically at a later stage.

The hon. member for Malmesbury referred to the use of loan capital and the part played by it in agriculture, as well as to its cost effect in agriculture. It is true that the general profitability of agriculture is very low in relation to that in any other industry. It varies between 6% and 7%, depending on the year. As far as specific industries within agriculture is concerned, one finds that the profitability in a specific industry also varies and can vary from year to year. The profitability in the wheat industry, for example, was 1,8% in the Swartland area during the past year. This percentage can be higher or lower, depending on the specific year. One finds a similar tendency in the maize industry. If we take into account the cost of spending loan capital to bring about certain inputs, we find that that cost, in normal economic circumstances, is determined by the general economic rules of the country, and that the cost can be increased or decreased in an attempt to control certain inflationistic tendencies in the national economy as a whole. This has an adverse effect within the agricultural structure. We find that as profitability, the return on capital invested in agriculture, decreases, and the cost of money increases, those very people who make use of loan capital, and even those people who make use of their own capital in order to get a bigger return, find that the supposed profitability of the borrowed money actually means a loss to them. That loss becomes bigger and has the following effect. We find that someone who made use of 20% loan capital when interest rates on borrowed money were 8% and 9% can no longer make a profit on 20% loan capital when interest rates rise to 14% and 15%. A further problem is that we are actually finding that the producers who find themselves in a problem situation are already in difficulties as a result of security for obtaining funds and that they are the very people who apply to the most expensive sources of money. Therefore they are the people who get into difficulties once again so much sooner. This has a further effect, and that is the tendency in the commercial world, as a result of the profitability of hire purchase, to finance hire purchase in preference to long-term loans, even on fixed investment. In this way they try to stimulate the producer in that direction, to persuade the producer to make use of that loan, something which gets him even more deeply into trouble.

This is the essential problem of the matter. When we look at this specific aspect, we realize that there are only one or two possible solutions to this problem. One of them is to increase the price of the product to such an extent that the profit on capital can be brought into line with the rest of the economy and with the rest of the industries that use loan capital. In the second place, the cost of money should be brought into line with the interest earnings in a specific facet or department.

Now it is true that if we only want to increase the prices of products as such, we run into other difficulties, difficulties with regard to the marketing of a product. Then it is not always possible to control the price of the specific product at will, because this leads to consumer resistance, as the hon. member for Bethal pointed out. In good years, when there are surplus supplies which is placed uncontrolled in the overseas trade, losses develop for which an increase in the price of the product alone is not a solution to the problem of correcting the return on capital. There is a further aspect. As soon as one has bad years, years in which, as has been indicated, there is no income, there is no return on capital either.

For this reason it is my submission to this House that the only fundamental solution in this regard is that, as the hon. member for Malmesbury has said, more capital should be made available by those sources that can do this in such a way that the cost of money is in line with the profit on the capital invested in agriculture. This is where the cost structure will be significantly lowered as far as this matter is concerned.

There is another very important aspect which should be highlighted here. This is the risk factor in agriculture. When we look at the risk factor, it is clear that this is the one single factor in the whole industry which frustrates the farmer most, the factor that in the very years in which all the inputs into his industry take place, he is in danger of having no income from which operating expenditure can be recovered.

As for crop insurance, this has a history. In the second place I want to point out today that it is a fundamental problem in this stage, i.e. that there is a lack of support for a crop insurance scheme which can be applied in such a manner that it can protect all risks on a profitable level.

I want to point out briefly that in 1966 there was a pilot scheme by a co-operative insurance organization. That scheme started functioning on certain basic principles. The first principle was that one tried at least to insure the production costs of the producer. In the second place, the insurance could not be based on averages, because as soon as one takes averages as a starting point, one finds that they are based on a historical fact which already includes certain natural disasters. Therefore, one has to work on a potential yield of a specific year. This is the way this insurance company works.

When it comes to the question of averages, I should like to quote what a Swiss person wrote with regard to crop insurance—

It is precisely this principle which this cooperative crop insuring company tried to eliminate by trying to have the potential yield during a specific year on a specific field determined by valuators, on a prescribed basis.

Now I want to return to what the hon. member for Wynberg said about marginal areas. It is specifically in this regard that a potential yield can be determined. Even in an area which normally, perhaps, cannot be regarded as a very good maize area, one sometimes finds certain fields which do have the potential to give higher yields than certain fields within a maize area. This is found in all areas. However, one must try to determine and highlight the potential of that field and of the farmer under certain productive circumstances.

This was given as a basis and 60% of the potential yield was then given as a crop guarantee. A premium rate was then linked to the 60%. The premium rate includes, in the first place, the insurance cost of the insurer and, in the second place, the claims compensation which is going to be included in this premium. The premium is basically divided into these two components. The costs include the insurance costs, the administrative costs, the field costs and the reinsurance costs. All this is part of the insurance cost. That cost as such has nothing to do with the variation, if the crop is insured, on the crop averages of the producer. Therefore it can rightly be said that this is a cost item which should be taken into consideration in a cost structure when a price estimate is made. If in future this House and the Government were to take into account the calculation of the insurance cost with regard to that part of the premium cost, the producer would be enabled to take out the insurance in future.

However, there is one important aspect, and that is that this insurance action which was started by the co-operative organizations should be stimulated. For the producer with a small profit margin, the present premium rate is too high to take out an additional insurance. I submit that in this regard the State has an important role to play, in the first place, by at least subjecting loans financed by the co-operatives or the Land Bank to compulsory insurance. The principle has already been established that a long-term loan from the Land Bank should as such be insured on a life insurance basis. Therefore I am of the opinion that any loan made to a producer on a crop production basis should be subject to crop insurance in order to provide security for the body which has granted the loan as well as for the producer, to enable him to keep on producing. In essence this will mean that the capital will be available for the producer to be assured of operating capital in the future and, on the other hand, that the general premium rate would drop as a result of a wider distribution of risk because more people would be taking out insurance. This would bring the whole insurance system within easier reach of the producer.

Finally, I want to say something about the tax structure. Provision has already been made for levelling off on the tax scale producers have to pay as well. Provision has also been made for writing off implements in the year in which they were bought. However, the uncertain nature of the crop— someone has a large crop one year and hardly anything the next year—means that it cannot be levelled off on the amount of income in a specific year. This is laid down in the Income Tax Act, Act No. 58 of 1962, under the definition of “taxable income”. It also appears in section 23(E) with regard to the reservation of funds. I submit that with regard to the reservation of funds there is justification in agriculture for enabling a producer to invest an amount with the Land Bank on which he should not have to pay tax during the year that it accrues to him. He should pay tax on the interest it has earned and on the amount for the year in which he withdraws it from the Land Bank. It is then regarded as taxable income for the year in which he withdraws the money. This system serves a dual purpose. In the first place it provides the Land Bank with additional funds and in the second place it means a further levelling down of the amount.

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with keen interest to hon. members on both sides of the House. The hon. member for Carletonville is obviously an expert on the mealie industry. I like his ideas on crop insurance and I look forward to hearing the hon. the Minister’s reaction to this. I also like his idea that farmers should be afforded the opportunity to set aside a non-taxable reserve in the Land Bank. This is certainly something that can be looked into.

I think we should all be grateful that the hon. member for Bethal put this motion before the House, because it pinpoints certain important issues. It is clear that in moving this motion he is aware—as many farmers and other people in the country are aware— that all is not well with agriculture in South Africa. By its very nature, agriculture can never be a completely stable industry. The weather, droughts, floods and differing markets inevitably make certain that this industry can never be completely stable. As a non-farmer, I want to explain how I feel about this. I believe that in many directions we are approaching our agricultural problems from the wrong point of view.

I have listened to the various suggestions which have been put forward so far during this debate and most of them do not seem to go to the root cause of the problem. They are medicines to cure a sickness which already exists. But they do not go into the basic reasons as to why this sickness exists in the first place. We have heard a lot of talk about financing, especially from the hon. member for Malmesbury and the hon. member for Carletonville. Hon. members spoke about interest charges and the high cost of credit. We would like to see a situation where farmers do not need that kind of credit. We are unfortunately in a situation at present where the majority of farmers are struggling. They cannot make ends meet. Each year this tremendous cost escalation hits them and they do not get the requisite returns. They are always lagging behind increased farming costs. When his produce goes to the consumer, the farmer has already had to swallow the inflationary costs that have come to him, and it is a long time before he gets reparation for that. Farmers are proud people. I think this was expressed very strongly in a similar debate last year. Farmers do not want credit, but they have to have it because they have no alternative at the moment. I think that what we have to try and do, when looking at the farming industry at the moment, is to try and see how it might be possible to create a situation in which farmers would be able to generate a little capital for themselves and would not have to live from hand to mouth. Another speaker has quite rightly said that farmers are not getting a decent return on their investment. Their return, generally speaking, is lower than in virtually any other sector of the economy. There are, of course, sectors of the economy at the moment, e.g. the building industry, which are feeling the pinch as much if not more than the farming industry, but generally farmers’ returns are totally inadequate.

I do not believe that subsidies are the answer. I respect the viewpoint of the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South who suggested that subsidies should be pumped in. I think he said that this should be done at the lower level. I am not sure that this is an answer either. This is again merely a palliative, medicine for a sickness that already exists. What we have to do is prevent the sickness in the first place. I tend to believe that his suggestion on subsidies would encourage the incompetent or inefficient farmer.

You are talking nonsense, man!

A farmer who works very hard should reap the benefits at the end, when he has produced, rather than being subsidized lower down the scale before he has produced. That is, however, a very quick reaction on my part. I should like to think about that suggestion a little more, but again I should like to hear the hon. the Minister’s reaction.

You should have thought first before you said it.

Well, I have thought very carefully about it. The hon. member, however, seems a little upset about my not having agreed with him. If he suggests that I should have thought a little more deeply about the matter, let me suggest that perhaps the same might apply to him. Still, it would be interesting to hear the hon. the Minister’s reaction, because I do not think he will agree with that hon. member either.

He will not do any thinking at all.

Well, he does not need to. He certainly knows the subject backwards, though I am not so certain about forwards. Let me, however, come back to the main theme of my speech. All is not well with agriculture. Certainly the farmer does not get a just reward for his produce, and certainly the consumer pays a high price, at the end of the chain, which does not bear a fair relationship to what the farmer is getting. What I am saying is something I have said before. The farmer is not getting enough for his produce if one relates this to the price the consumer pays. The Government has been exercising its mind for a long time now—one only has to think of the Marketing Commission under the chairmanship of the hon. member for Bethal—to discover how one can better the processing and distribution cost situation. That hon. member quite rightly talked about the necessity of doing the best one possibly can when it comes to processing and distribution costs.

I should now like to take a look at the meat industry in as constructive a spirit as I possibly can because it is an industry that I do know a little about. I believe that we have reached a situation where controls, which were possibly introduced initially to bring about a certain amount of stability in the meat industry, are in fact now having the reverse effect. For example, a floor price, which ensured that farmers would get a minimum amount for their stock, was introduced. I must admit that this has introduced a certain amount of stability. It has, however, brought about stability at a lower level. When the hon. member for Carletonville spoke about crop insurance, he spoke about averages being a bad thing to focus on because one should talk about potential. There are farmers who are extremely good farmers and who should, in fact, be getting more for good quality meat. However, because of quota systems and other controls, they are being forced into a situation where they have to accept a floor price or something very close to it.

Anybody who is a cattle farmer at the moment is not very pleased with life at all. The cattle farmers are not really making a living and they are not getting a just reward for their efforts. I believe that in the meat industry the answer lies in the distribution process. I see in the meat industry a situation in which middlemen, big corporations, have too much of a slice of the industry as a whole. Right down the line we find that the middleman, the wholesaler, is frequently associated with the agent and is heavily represented on the Meat Board itself. The major commercial meat organization in the country almost has control of the Meat Board. The chairman of the Vleissentraal is also chairman of the Meat Board. There are three large monopolistic companies in the meat industry and I believe that the strangle-hold they are getting on the meat industry is not good for the farmer. It is not good for the consumer either. I believe they are manipulating meat prices by means of the stranglehold they have. They are involved all along the line, even at the point of retail.

When it comes to the retailing of meat, they have in recent years developed new outlets in the form of supermarkets. It is not the supermarket owners who sell meat through their supermarkets. They are using the services of the wholesalers, the middlemen, the monopolies, who under licence market meat through the supermarket chains. Smaller butchers who used to be able to distribute meat fairly economically are finding themselves cut right out of the picture at the point of sale, the abattoir. They find they cannot compete. There is no longer a competitive situation. The monopolies put in rings of buyers who manipulate prices so that finally the small man is pushed out. It gets to the point where for the small man it is no longer worth the candle. His only alternative is to buy direct from the wholesaler. He feels he just cannot cope with the manipulations of the monopolies at the point of sale. Then he gets into the hands of the wholesalers, who are the monopolies. There have been instances where butchers have been granted extended credit through bad times and have reached the stage where they too ended up in the hands of the monopolies and have had to pay the price the wholesaler demanded or go out of business. As the hon. the Minister well knows, a lot of butchers have gone out of business. The net result has not been of any advantage to the farmer or the consumer. I think it is the fact that the competitive aspect of buying has been taken out of the marketing process that has resulted in this situation.

The net result is that more and more cattle farmers are leaving cattle farming and are turning good grazing land over to mealies. This is the point concerning which the hon. member for Carletonville joined issue with my colleague, the hon. member for Wynberg. We are not suggesting that certain land should be designated as unsuitable for growing mealies. What we do say, though, is that one must try to stabilize the agricultural industry as a whole, and not just the mealie industry, so that there will no longer be any temptation for a cattle farmer to turn his land over to mealies. The mealie industry is one of the more stable sections of the agricultural industry today.

Ask Harry Oppenheimer what his Soetvelde-Boerdery is telling him!

Even if the farmer grows mealies on marginal land as far as the production of mealies is concerned, he prefers that sort of security to the sort of situation existing in the cattle industry. Before the cattle farmer sends cattle to market, he sometimes has to hold them on his land much longer than he would like to because of the quota system.

It is a section of the industry which is completely uncertain. I think the task of this Government, and of all the people who are concerned with agriculture in this country, is to try to stabilize the meat market. I think the same applies to dairy products. Again, in a constructive spirit, I think one should draw attention to the fact that we find ourselves in a situation in which we actually have to import cheese, because so many people have found it just not worth the candle to continue producing milk and milk products. They too have switched over to other branches of agriculture.

I have addressed these thoughts to the hon. the Minister and the hon. member who has moved this motion. I, too, believe that one must try to keep politics out of agriculture as far as possible, but it is not always possible, because one has to exert certain pressures in certain directions. I think the hon. the Minister is very well aware of this.

My final plea consists of reiterating what I have said earlier on. All the suggestions made by hon. members in the House today have been palliatives. They have looked at the sickness and asked how we can alleviate this sickness. We have to go deeper and look at agriculture as a whole, if we want to get rid of the sickness and put our farmers in a situation where they can stand on their own two feet, which is exactly what they want to do. We must certainly give them as much help as we possibly can when it comes to research. In this regard I agree with the hon. member for Bethal. Also, the assistance given by Agriculture Credit and Land Tenure is welcome.

However, the farming industry finds itself in a dangerous situation at the moment. I think the recent drought indicated this more than any other occurrence in recent times. We realize how close to the bone so many farmers in South Africa are working at the moment. It would not need very much to push them right over the edge. This must be prevented at all costs.

Mr. Speaker, I should also like to express my appreciation for the opportunity I have to participate in this debate. When we attempt to analyse the problems of the agricultural sector, it must not be interpreted as begging.

We have heard today about the capital that has been invested in agriculture in South Africa, an amount of about R22 milliard. We also know that the return on that capital is in the region of 7%. We also know that the input on maize in the North Eastern Free State and the Western Transvaal amounts to about R60 000 per farming unit per annum. At the moment, the farmers’ debt amounts to about R2,6 milliard, which is approximately 13% of the capital invested in agriculture. This figure does not look bad at all, but when we think that 40% of our farmers are carrying this debt and if we were to project this debt of R2,6 milliard onto their portion of the capital holding, it is a dangerous figure.

When one considers the problem with which South Africa and the world are contending at the moment, i.e. inflation, one finds that the people who know better than we do are saying that the only way to combat inflation is by means of increased productivity. We recently heard that the manufacturing sector received an average annual salary increase of 12% to 14% over the period from 1971 to the end of 1974, while the productivity for the same period decreased annually by 2% per capita. If we were to apply the same criterion to the agricultural sector, we would find that from 1971 to the end of 1977 the farming sector reduced its labour force, White and Black, from 1 628 000 to 1 280 000 people. That is, in other words, a decrease of 21% in the total labour force in the agricultural sector, but during the same period there was an increase in output of 161%, measured in monetary terms. It was about 16% in volume. Surely we can then maintain that if there is one sector of the national economy which has made its contribution to fighting the inflation rate in South Africa, it is in fact the agricultural sector.

We can also consider another aspect. The agricultural sector takes second place to gold as an earner of foreign exchange. When one considers this state of affairs, one can take another look at the needs of agriculture. Although it is the second largest earner of foreign exchange, its needs with regard to imported goods is extremely favourable in relation to that of other sectors. The agricultural sector of South Africa therefore plays a very important role in keeping our balance of payments on the right side of the scale.

Having made these few introductory remarks, I should like to confine myself to one of our cost structures, i.e. electricity in the rural areas, electricity on the farm. I should like to concentrate more on that, but I mentioned the other matters beforehand, because I believe it is necessary to be able to relate this argument to something at least. Let us consider the electricity situation. I say in all humility that I am aware that our authorities and many people have paid a great deal of attention to the possibility of supplying electricity to the farms at a low tariff. I believe that at the time we determined the Escom policy, there was not such a great need for electricity on every farm in the first place. No, we then had sufficient fuel at a reasonable price. We are facing a situation today where we know that we may be standing before a door tomorrow through which we will no longer be able to obtain any fuel. If we are in fact able to obtain the fuel, we shall definitely have to make the little we can get available for food production. Therefore we should take a look at electricity from this point of view.

What is even more important, however, is that we have a large amount of coal in South Africa. As I have said, we have a shortage of fuel in South Africa. Has the time not arrived when we should make this source of power available to our farmers at a cheaper tariff? Should we not examine this policy very thoroughly so that we will be able to make this source of energy available on every farm at a tariff which the farmers are able to afford? It is my submission, in all humility, that it should be the function of the State to bear the installation costs of electrical power to every farm so that the farmer only pays for his actual consumption. I know it is a mouthful, but I believe that in the times in which we are living in South Africa, we should have the courage of our convictions to undertake these things if they are in the interests of South Africa.

In order to develop my argument further, I should like to say just a few words in the time at my disposal on how the supplying of cheaper electricity to every farm may affect one commodity.

Escom is killing us.

Before I say that, allow me to say that electrical consumption in irrigation works, for instance, may bring about considerable savings in all sectors of farming. Let us take a look at the dairy industry. I have asked our specialists in the dairy industry, the largest dairy cooperative, to make a survey of what the effect would be with regard to savings if electricity could be supplied to every farm.

Before I discuss this subject any further, let me just mention a few things that are essential. In the dairy industry we find the situation that hygiene is one of the most important aspects of a good dairy product. In fact, we pay a premium for good hygiene in the dairy industry; it is incorporated in the price structure. Secondly, I believe it is absolutely necessary that one should be able to produce products of the highest quality. Thirdly, it is essential to mechanize, apart from labour problems and the fact that a dairy farm has a seven-day working week. In this regard electricity can also play an enormous role.

If one is able to milk one’s cows with a milking machine, convey the milk through a pipe into a refrigerated bulk container and from there transport it further in the bulk carrier, one not only accomplishes good hygiene, but also succeeds in keeping the product refrigerated in the container until it is full. This will mean that the number of transport journeys will be reduced by at least half. At the moment the milk has to be delivered in cans at the consumer point every day, but in this way it will only be necessary to deliver the milk every second day. One can therefore save up to 50% on transport costs.

As far as the whole dairy industry is concerned, it has been calculated very conservatively that if one could succeed in doing that, about 10 million litres of fuel could be saved annually by doing that.

At the moment electricity on our farms is generated by electric motors and generators. If these electric motors did not have to work—in other words, if Escom could supply the power—one would have an annual saving of 4 million litres of diesel fuel which are used by such engines. That is, in other words, a total of 14 million litres of fuel which could be saved annually by using electric power. This task is not only in the interest of the farmer, but it should be regarded as a service to enable the producer in South Africa to provide foodstuffs at a reasonably low price for the consumer and for South Africa as a whole.

When I think of the other effects of what I am proposing and its strategic importance as a result of all the other benefits we could derive from it, I believe that we will definitely have to consider this step. I believe that agriculture in South Africa has such an important place in the national economy and is so indispensable for good relations, that we will simply have to examine the factors which are related to it. Our hon. Minister of Agriculture once said here in the House: “A hungry soldier is worth nothing.”

He is not prepared.

Hungry people, of any race or colour, usually cause problems. I believe that our agricultural sector is sufficiently important for us to request the Government to play its part in a really responsible manner to keep our production inputs and our costs structures as low as possible.

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the hon. member who has just resumed his seat and I wish to say that I agree with him entirely with regard to the electrification of our farms. Approximately 20 years ago I moved a motion at an agricultural congress in the Cape to the effect that we should begin a system of “rural electrification co-ops”, since this system has been used with great success in America for the electrification of farms. It works on the basis that the co-op, founded by the farmers, can itself purchase the power, plant the poles, and handle the whole situation at a very low cost. This system has made a very substantial contribution to the electrification of the farms in America. Perhaps we in South Africa can start thinking along those lines, because the electrification of farms by Escom entails heavy expenditure for the farmer. To my mind a new method of supplying electricity to the farmers should be considered.

When I read the motion of the hon. member for Bethal the first time, I thought that he was perhaps ploughing with the heifer which I used last year. The hon. member’s motion reads as follows—

†The hon. the Minister will remember that last year I referred three times on separate occasions to the part that the Government itself plays in pushing up the input costs of farmers. I agree entirely with the hon. member for Bethal that the question of the Government’s part in pushing up the input costs of farmers has got to be taken cognizance of and that we have to find a way by which those costs can be reduced. Hon. members have mentioned that subsidies should be paid to farmers on the input side. I want to make the point again that I have made before. Subsidies are the most expensive form of money one can get, because subsidies are tax money. Subsidies have to be collected. There is a whole administrative process that has to be gone through before a subsidy can be paid. It has to be collected. It has to be controlled. It has to be checked. It has to be handed from one department to another, then being handed over again to people before becoming effective as a subsidy. I made the suggestion last year, and I want to make it again. I hope the hon. member for Bethal will not take it amiss if I introduce an amendment to his motion, an amendment which gives point to what I am saying. If we take, for example, tractors on which there is an excise duty of 12,5% …

15%.

Is it 15% now? Well, it is worse than I thought. Surely to goodness, if the State did not collect an excise duty of 15,5% on tractors, there would be two advantages. One is that the administrative costs of collection would be saved. That is something that would benefit the State. Furthermore, that cost of 15% that the farmer has to pay, would not be there. It would thus reduce the cost the farmer has to bear before he reaches the point where he can plant his crop. It would at least have an effect on the input cost of the farmer if he does not have that 15% excise duty collected.

To me it is self-evident that there must be, and there are, areas in which the State collects duties on commodities which contribute to the input costs of farmers. In a discussion I had with the hon. member for Bethal last year I mentioned this as an example. I am not an expert on the subject at all, but I want to refer to the example of sulphur. Sulphur is imported into South Africa. It is used for making sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid is used to make ammonium sulphate. Ammonium sulphate is used by farmers in planting their crops. Now, along the line from the input, on which there must be a duty, to the sale of the sulphuric acid, on which there must be an excise or a sales tax or something, there must be a number of steps taken by the Government in collecting money, steps which have the effect of forcing up the input costs of farmers.

I now move the following amendment to the motion introduced by the hon. member for Bethal—

And I refer to levies because there are many different sorts of levies, whether it is general sales tax, whether it is customs and excise duty, or whatever it might happen to be. There are many levies payable to the Government which contribute to this. I specifically ask the two departments of agriculture to apply their minds to this problem. The same applies to the Department of Customs and Excise and the Department of Finance. The latter department is evidently going to lose revenue in this way. I include organized commerce and organized agriculture as a matter of course.

The question of losing revenue on one side is surely an advantage above having to pay subsidies on the other side. I have already said that money paid as subsidies is the most expensive money one can get. The State will be saving administration costs and it will benefit the farmer. I should like to think that we in this country can come up with some new ideas. We have to recreate a margin for the farming community. We have run into a price ceiling which we cannot overcome. If we were to enter a new period of flourishing growth and increased salaries, the housewife, Black and White, might be able to afford increased prices of food. The hon. the Minister has already said food prices were going to go up. There is no doubt about it. They are going to go up. They have to go up. However, the Government can contribute to lessening the increase as much as possible by looking at this in order to try to bring down particular costs. I believe the Government will benefit by adopting a suggestion of this nature. On the question of the subsidy I would say that we are not benefiting the farmer at all by subsidizing consumer prices. I agree with the hon. member that the society in which we live regards farmers and the word “subsidy” as a swear-word. It is a bad thing for the farming community. What we have to do is to recreate a margin of profitability.

The point I wish to make is that if the Government can bring down the cost of input, even if the net realization remains the same, it will be recreating that margin of profitability without which the agricultural community simply cannot survive. Therefore I have moved my amendment to the hon. member’s motion and hope that the hon. the Minister will accept my suggestion and act accordingly. The farming community would indeed benefit very much from it.

Mr. Speaker, I think that anyone listening to the various speakers on this motion during the course of the morning would definitely have been impressed with the exceptionally high standard of the debate. I think we were able to experience the thorough knowledge which hon. members on both sides of the House displayed in respect of a very grave problem in agriculture and I think that the agricultural community in South Africa can feel very reassured about the quality of the representatives they have in this House. I think that in this respect we are very fortunate. The proof of this is the exceptional knowledge which all the speakers displayed, and when I say this I include the Opposition speakers.

This motion is of very great importance to South Africa. It is a motion which affects the basic requirements of every individual in this country, and I wonder whether everyone in this country realizes the value and importance of a motion such as this. When I look at the Press gallery I am disappointed to see such a scarcity of newspaper reporters there. They are the people who should pass on to the general public the message conveyed here today. However, there is no sensation here, or anything with which they can get at the Government. This is simply a matter, the problems of which are very specifically being pointed out problems which exist for everyone, whether one is sitting on the Opposition side or wherever. These problems exist and we all realize it. These problems must be brought home to every sector in this country, but particularly to the consumer, so that the grave problems facing agriculture can be brought to their attention. That is why we are disappointed that the Press and the other public media sometimes do not give the necessary publicity to motions such as these.

I think it is essential for us to apply the dissecting-knife constantly to make certain that a sound balance is always maintained between food prices and what the consumer can afford to pay on the one hand and producer prices and what can ensure the primary producer of a decent subsistence on the other. In my humble opinion, and I think that this was very clearly demonstrated here this morning, a very serious disturbance of this balance has recently occurred in South Africa. At the present stage agriculture in South Africa is going through one of its most difficult periods in a very long time. All of us will realize, and this was also pointed out this morning, how difficult it is to keep on maintaining this balance. The hon. member for Bethal pointed out very effectively that South Africa does not have the best agricultural land in the world and that only a very small portion of its land is agricultural land with a high potential.

Business suspended at 12h45 and resumed at 14h15.

Afternoon Sitting

Mr. Speaker, before business was suspended I was explaining that we are dealing with certain risk factors in this country which do not apply in countries in the northern hemisphere for example. Consequently it is necessary to examine with a far more critical eye the function of the State in regard to agriculture in the countries of the southern hemisphere, and more specifically South Africa. I want to submit that the State definitely has a very important function to fulfil by serving as a shock absorber, on the one hand by means of food subsidies etc., and on the other in times of emergency and disaster.

I want to refer very briefly to one specific aspect, and that is the financing with which the State provides farmers through the Agricultural Credit Board and the Land Bank. The Agricultural Credit Board has a contribution to make towards ensuring a stable food supply by financing deserving farmers whose burden of debt, owing to factors beyond their control, has risen to such an extent that they can no longer, owing to a lack of adequate security, be assisted by other financing bodies. I maintain that if many of these farmers had not been assisted by the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure, many of them would already have retired from agriculture. Since 1 October 1966, when the Agricultural Credit Act was passed, a total amount of R242 407 000 was spent on measures which I shall sketch briefly. The department granted 3 569 debt consolidation loans to the value of R58 382 000 to farmers who, owing to factors beyond their control, were experiencing problems. In addition production loans were made available to farmers who found themselves in difficulties owing to disasters or poor crops—once again factors beyond their control. In this category 8 608 loans to the value of R17 607 000 were granted to farmers.

There are other matters as well to which the department devoted very careful attention and I want to refer briefly to a few of them. In this connection I am thinking of land purchases and land allocations, a very important function of this department for over the same period—i.e. since 1 October 1966— a total amount of R97 million was granted to 3 728 applicants. Soil conservation loans to the value of more than R12 million were granted to 2 684 applicants. The financing of irrigation works is a very important function of the department. After the Department of Water Affairs had approved of the irrigation projects concerned, an amount of R13 798 000 was allocated to 2 470 applicants. In respect of housing for labourers an amount of R10 800 000, for the purchase of equipment and livestock R3 900 000 and for assistance in the case of emergencies an amount of R28 547 000 was granted to 50 195 applicants.

I want to pay tribute to the department. By means of this department many farmers were kept on their farms. The department made a very major contribution by providing many farmers with cheap financing and in that way it has therefore made a direct contribution to cheaper food supplies. I want to pay tribute to the board as well. A great deal of criticism is levelled at it, but it does not have an easy task on its shoulders to screen so many applicants and deal with them on merit.

I should very much have liked to have said a few words about the Land Bank as well, but time does not allow me to do so. Perhaps one could, at a subsequent opportunity, conduct a meaningful debate on that subject. Certain hon. members did in fact refer quite correctly to the importance of the Land Bank.

But I want to raise another important matter here, a matter which I feel needs to be raised in a debate such as this. The ideal of course would be that all agricultural financing should be done through the Land Bank or the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. But as we know, this is not possible today. Consequently other financing bodies, such as commercial banks, make a very great contribution to financing in agriculture.

The words which I am now going to say I want to choose very carefully. However I do not think I am being unreasonable, since agriculture is at present heading for a very difficult period, if I today ask commercial banks to display the utmost discretion and the greatest conceivable sympathy. If unreasonable pressure is exerted on farmers at this critical juncture, it will be catastrophic for agriculture. My further appeal to commercial banks is to afford the very closest co-operation when farmers apply to have portions of their overdrawn bank accounts transferred on a long-term basis to either the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure or the Land Bank, and not to come forward then with unreasonable demands in respect of demands for security which could perhaps cause the entire transaction to miscarry. Surely it is in the interests of any financing body to have a portion of short-term credit transferred to long-term credit. It is to the advantage of the client, but it is also in the interests of the financing body concerned rather to have it transferred on a long-term basis. I do not want to prejudice any person or a financing body in this country, but I think that as far as short-term credit by means of overdrawn bank accounts is concerned, commercial banks in particular can make a major contribution to cheaper food production if they take the few things I have mentioned here into consideration as far as the future of agriculture is concerned. I want to address a really earnest request to them to display the greatest conceivable discretion in the consideration of this type of financing.

Mr. Speaker, I should just like to agree with previous speakers that we have held a debate here today in which all three parties that participated maintained the highest standard I have ever heard here. Consequently I want to thank all who participated. I shall refer to a few of them.

First of all I just want to touch on another aspect Do we realize where our problem lies today. It is not a problem unique to South Africa. Our own oil account in 1972 was R188 million. Today the account stands at R1 487 million. That is just our oil account. This is not happening as a result of any campaign against South Africa. We must remember that 30% of the world’s oil supplies has been cut off. Iran has stopped producing owing to a lot of nonsense which is in progress there. However, 30% less oil is available in the world, and everyone is bidding for the remaining 70%. The story I hear is that the price of oil could rise to R24 per barrel, whereas it is R11 or R13 per barrel at present. So the worst problems are yet to come. What about the possibility of subsidies? I cannot understand, though, how one can subsidize a commodity such as oil, which has increased to phenomenally in price.

We make no secret of the fact—the Department of Agricultural Economics and Marketing, the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, the Department of Agricultural Credit and the Government admit it—that things are not going well with agriculture. In 1978 the production was 3% higher than in the previous year but the net income of the farmers dropped by R283 million to R1 449 million. This represents a decrease of 16% which was mainly attributable to a cost increase of 11%. As I have said, the farmer’s income dropped by 16%. It is not necessary to appoint a commission of enquiry into the matter; it is an actual, proven fact that the farmer is financially worse off. The same applies to most of the industries. There is a kind of—I do not want to use the word “depression”—oppressive economic situation which has arisen on account of various factors. One of these is oil. Five hundred and five farmers on their tractors charged at the Ministry of Agriculture in Washington.

It might happen here.

If the farmers here do the same, I shall take my tractor and join them. However, one will achieve nothing in that way because this is a situation we must approach calmly. Therefore I am pleased about the debate that has been conducted here, for all the parties agree that we have a problem here.

The hon. member for Bethal pointed out a few very real factors. He said that we should take consumer resistance into account. I want to point out that we harvested 11 million bags of potatoes last year and that we had an extremely poor harvest of 9 million bags this year. However, the price per bag is 54 cents lower this year than it was last year. We admit that salary adjustments have not kept pace with the increase in the cost of living. We know that there are railwaymen with a wife and six children who take home R240 per month. After all, we know that the salaries of teachers, nurses and Public Servants have not kept pace with the rise in the cost of living. Is it necessary to hide this fact? Now these people are buying more judiciously and there are substitutes available for some foods, because people are counting their cents more carefully. The hon. member stated quite correctly that there was consumer resistance. This is not attributable to a resistance to food, but to a shortage of money.

The hon. member went on to point out that the farmers’ burden of debt was going to rise to R3 000 million this year. Fortunately he also said that the assets of the farmers amounted to R20 000. The hon. member for Heilbron also referred to the fact that the ratio of assets to liabilities was still such that it did not paint an entirely pessimistic picture. However, the hon. member for Bethal stated quite correctly that when there is a crop failure, as happened this year, one could not rectify it with a change in price. There are many farmers who had a harvest of only 40% or even less this year. For example to change the price of sunflower seeds will not help. I do not want to talk about maize, because I want to negotiate for a good maize price this year. [Interjections.] I just want to say that one cannot make good that loss in one year by means of an upward adjustment in prices if the farmer does not have a harvest.

The hon. member for Wynberg said that the maize price is the only price that has kept pace with the increases. He then referred to fruit and various other products. Let us just see what happened during the past six years. In 1972 the maize price for the producer was R34,60 per ton. At present it is R79,95. In other words, there was an increase of 131% for the producer over a period of six years. The wheat price was adjusted by 95% over the period of six years, industrial milk by 128%, and fresh milk by between 122% and 135%. These are upward adjustments. There was an upward adjustment of 115% for beef—this is the floor price—and 157% for mutton. That is where our dilemma lies. We have tried, during the past six years, to effect an upward adjustment of these prices, but we were unable to overtake the production costs because the price of fuel, for example, rose by 246% up to the end of November last year. Over the same period of six years, fertilizer rose by 197% and the railage on some goods by 350%. However, it was pointed out in the House that the Railways is not a charitable organization—for example they have to buy Escom power and diesel oil. All these factors are restricting the farmer. The hon. member for Wynberg must remember that, as far as fruit is concerned, the only price which we fix is the price for the canner. The other prices are determined by the world market. The same applies to citrus; the same applies to peanuts—there is a floor price and there is an arrear payment if the producers received good prices overseas—and the same applies to sunflower seed. There are only a few products for which we can fix a one channel price. The clingstone peach farmer asks what one should do if one cannot sell clingstone peaches overseas unless they are canned. The dilemma is that the farmer has been caught in a net of cost increases which he can do nothing about. The cost of the can, sugar, carton, label, transportation and ship’s freight on all canned fruit is rising. The farmer can cut costs only by reducing the price of his own product, for the cost of all the other items is fixed. For example a Western Cape fruit farmer can receive R105 per ton of fruit on the local market, but would prefer to accept less in order to have it sold on the foreign market so as to compete with Australia, America and other countries. We have reached the stage where the housewife is enraged at the price of a tin of canned peaches. The contents of that tin represent only 22% of the total price. The rest of the price covers the cost of the can, the sugar and all the other items. Consequently the hon. member for Wynberg is quite wrong when he says that it is only the price of maize that has kept pace with the circumstances. This is not true; the price of maize has not kept pace either. Still at the old diesel fuel price it costs a farmer R31,04 this year to plough a hectare of maize land, prepare the seed beds, plant the seeds, hoe the land twice, harvest and convey the maize to the siloes. Six years ago it cost R6.

As I have said, the price of fertilizer has increased to such an extent that we are now paying R360 million per annum for fertilizer.

The hon. member for Wynberg said that maize should preferably not be planted in the marginal areas. The hon. member for Carletonville replied quite correctly to that statement of his. Would the hon. member for Wynberg be able to demarcate the marginal areas which are not suitable for maize? He may perhaps think that maize should not be planted in the Mafeking district, but I can show him farms in that district where the soil in certain areas is as suitable for the planting of maize as land in the middle of the maize triangle.

The hon. member also stated that the abattoirs should operate 24 hours a day. I wish they were able to do so, but then the people would eventually be walking knee-deep in the dung; they need eight hours per day to clean the place. They cannot keep on slaughtering without cleaning up.

The hon. member also said that 40 years ago we consumed more butter and milk than at present. That is true; he should have added, though, that it was per capita. The butter and milk consumption per capita 40 years ago was greater than it is today because 40 years ago we did not have such things as margarine, Fanta, Coke, and all that jazz. At present sugar and water is competing with milk. Consequently things have changed. Forty years ago people still had their feet planted firmly on the ground and drank a nourishing and healthy beverage. Today the price of milk delivered to your flat is 32 cents per litre, while a bottle of Coke, less the deposit on the bottle, also costs 32 cents. However, the consumption of Coke is increasing while the consumption of milk is almost static. I am simply pointing this out to the hon. member to illustrate my argument. I am not quarrelling with the Opposition, for I am in a very genial frame of mind. I agree with them throughout. Even the clergyman is nodding his head.

The hon. member for Malmesbury is a director of the Wesgraan Co-operative Society and the hon. member for Bethal is chairman of the Eastern Transvaal Cooperative Society. When the disastrous drought struck the Swartland, I held three discussions in loco with the hon. member for Malmesbury. He also came to Pretoria repeatedly and presented to us the fact that the farmers were experiencing their third crop failure in succession and could no longer continue, farmers whose families had been occupying those farms for five generations. In the first year they experienced the drought, in the ensuing year their livestock was drowned and this year the drought was so bad that some people in the area did not even recover their seed. We then began to devote attention to the matter and convened a meeting together with the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs and the hon. the Minister of Finance, who appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Jacobs who will give attention to all these aspects. He let us know this morning that they are meeting again today and that they will bring out a report next week, after considering all the proposals made here today as well. Dr. Jacobs is from the Reserve Bank. He and the hon. the Minister of Finance, together, hold the keys to the safe and they will see whether we cannot implement some of the things which hon. members asked for here today. I want to thank the hon. member for Malmesbury for his contribution.

†The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg South says we must reduce the restrictions. He also referred to the pasteurization of milk. We discussed this matter in the past and I can only say “thank you” to him for the contribution which he has made in this regard. We must develop new markets, advertise and promote. We started with a promotion campaign for red meat, and the consumption of red meat has increased by 16%, not only because of the campaign, but also because the broiler industry is coming into line with the red meat industry by creating a more realistic price for the two commodities. I thank the hon. member for his contribution. Some of the things he said were followed up by the hon. member for Mooi River.

*The hon. member for Carletonville also emphasized that we should not price ourselves out of the market. South Africa is an exporter of food, something I am proud of, but if we eventually make our prices so high that our products cannot sell abroad, we shall find ourselves in difficulties. Agricultural produce to the value of R1 350 million is exported annually, something to which other hon. members referred. This is really something to be proud of, if one bears in mind that we are always being castigated as a country that does everything wrong. It is pleasant to see a whole row of Opposition members stand up and say that they are proud of our agriculture. It is also pleasant to think that we have at last brought home our message. They must help to convey it to the rest of the world so that the rest of the world can realize that our small number of farmers, only 77 000 at the southern point of Africa, own 65% of all the tractors operating in Africa. This morning one of the hon. members spoke of an African country that was asking for food. Food is the best weapon we can have. If we price ourselves out of the market, then we will be in trouble, as the hon. member for Carletonville said, but we shall nevertheless have to consider the price of the farmers’ products in order to keep them in production.

As regards the risk problem to which the hon. member for Carletonville referred, I want to say that the crop insurance scheme has now reached the stage where it can be referred to the Cabinet. The solution is a kind of crop insurance which will make it possible to recover production costs. I agree with the plan put forward by the hon. member for Carletonville. You are a farmer yourself, Mr. Speaker, and you know that if you make a big profit one year, there is the concession that you may purchase tractors which may be written off once only the first year for income tax purposes.

For example, one finds a farmer who had a record harvest last year, and who, before paying income tax, purchases five, six or seven of the large four-wheel drive tractors and who is dealt a knock-out blow this year. No one in his neighbourhood wants to buy a tractor because they do not have any money. Those tractors then stand under the willow tree. In any event the State did not get anything. If he had invested that money, which he used, perhaps injudiciously, for the purchase of the tractors, with the Land Bank at a low rate of interest, I say give him a concession. But what happens now? Now he has to go to the Department of Agricultural Credit for a State loan. Actually it is “penny wise and pound foolish”. Consequently I think that the idea which the hon. member for Carletonville put forward was a very sound one.

†The hon. member for Orange Grove said that there was uneven competition for the small butcher against the three big establishments. It might be so, but I feel that the hon. member for Orange Grove was paid a visit by somebody called Velatani. This was reported in the Sunday Express. I would like the manager of the Meat Board, Dr. Lombard, to talk with the hon. member for Orange Grove. I tried to abolish the restriction on small butcher licences, but now we have a man in business, the small butcher, saying that we must stop this nonsense. He says that we must not give licences to all the small butchers because there is overtrading in this game. We must have a look at the whole situation, but it will take a long time to explain the whole meat problem. We must keep an eye on the possibility of a monopoly and three big companies controlling the whole situation. I am still happy at the moment with the situation. There might still be small mistakes, but I cannot agree with this hon. member that cattle farmers are producing less because of the system. That is not the reason why they are losing business. It is as a result of the profitability connected with that kind of farming. The hon. member says that we have to import cheese because farmers have gone over to other products because of the system. Two and a half years ago I asked the consumer to help us, I said: “This industry is in difficulties. The farmer is going to contribute R20 million because of the difficulties. The Government’s subsidy has been reduced from R12 million to R6 million: Help us with R5 million, because we have an overproduction. Who must pay for it?” I asked for 10 cents more per kilogram of cheese and 15 cents more per kilogram of butter. What happened? Hell broke loose and I had no alternative but to ask the farmer to contribute the R5 million. The farmer had to carry the burden of the R25 million alone. Two and a half years ago I predicted that there would be a scarcity of cheese in this country and we have now agreed to a proposal to import a little cheese. Otherwise we shall not have enough. I predicted this two and a half years ago, but then hon. members did not help me; they shouted together with the housewives. I am not scolding them. I am not cross with them.

*But, believe me, the truth triumphs every time. Hon. members must simply leave me alone so that I can do the job myself.

The hon. member for Heilbron said the State should pay for the installation costs of power lines to the farms. The hon. member said that we should encourage the utilization of electricity from coal so that electricity may for example be used to drive a water pump, thus enabling us to save diesel fuel. As far as Escom is concerned, however, we made one mistake. At one agricultural congress after another we urged the hon. the Minister of Economic to ensure that the entire country was electrified. That development took place too rapidly and Escom had to lend money to finance the work. Escom incurred so many obligations and, in view of the fact that interest rates rose, it had to increase the price of power to such an extent, in order to break even, that many of our farmers are no longer able to afford it. The Department of Agricultural Technical Services encouraged farmers to use power and told them to use sprinkler systems and we even granted them loans to instal electrically-operated sprinkler systems. But the price of power rose to such an extent that today the farmer is no longer able to afford to have that system powered by electricity. We shall go into all the proposals put forward by the hon. member, but the one dealing with the electrification of farms is a difficult one.

†I second the hon. member for Mooi River’s proposal that excise duties on tractors, implements and, for instance, sulphur, is forcing up production costs. I fully agree with him in this respect, but we must remember that in total it is not a big amount that is involved. If one takes the total cost of fertilizer it amounts to R360 million. The total cost of diesel alone is an astronomical figure. These are all side-lines that can eventually help lowering the costs. I think Dr. Jacobs is paying attention to this proposal as well. The hon. member spoke one true word when he said that the consumer buying power cannot cope with price increases.

*The hon. the Deputy Minister of Agriculture is my new stable companion and he is directly in control of agricultural credit. We are living in a period in which the farmers will, to an increasing extent, have to report to State loans and assistance. I appreciate his approach in this connection. I want to tell him that he will really get along well with me. We are going to co-operate well.

We have a committee under the chairmanship of the Secretary to the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure which is investigating the depopulation of the rural areas. It is at present investigating methods of effecting a resettlement in extensive areas. The Department of Agricultural Technical Services gave me a sheaf of notes and Dr. Immelman, our new Secretary in the place of Dr. Verbeek, wrote this “speech” and gave it to me this morning at the airport. I read through it on the way here and I hope I shall have time enough to present the “speech”, but my time has elapsed and I hope to be accorded a subsequent opportunity to enable me to do so.

Mr. Speaker, we were particularly grateful to hear from the hon. the Minister that there is a working committee which is looking into the matter which we debated here this morning. We hope and trust that that working committee will bring out a report and make a recommendation in the short term. We shall now, at this moment, have to receive certain auxiliary measures.

We are all keeping an eye on the drought in this country. As I have already said, the drought is not our greatest problem. The drought which is prevailing at present in our agronomy areas is only emphasizing the problems which we have just mentioned here. We therefore trust that we will obtain considerable assistance and support from the Government for agriculture in this country, by means of the announcement which the hon. the Minister made here this afternoon. With that I consequently withdraw the motion.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 34 and motion and amendment lapsed.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

The introduction to the relevant section of the Act reads as follows—

Mr. Speaker, my reason for moving this motion is of a twofold nature. On the one hand, I do so because it presents the Opposition and the Government with a good opportunity to confront each other with their fundamental standpoints on this matter and, one hopes, to conduct a fruitful debate. In the second place, I move this motion because I also believe it to be one which enables the Opposition as a whole to support it. Therefore there need not be any differences within the Opposition ranks. I say this because when this legislation was discussed in this House for the first time, the then Leader of the Opposition, Field-Marshal Smuts, expressed the following opinion about it. With reference to the Minister concerned he said (Hansard, Vol. 71, col. 2524)—

Now I find it striking that one of the Opposition parties apparently does not intend to participate in the discussion. Still, I take it that they will nevertheless support the motion.

This Act, as I understand it, has three objectives. In the first place, it is intended to bring about racial apartheid and segregation. In the second place, it is intended to enforce by law the racial purity of White people, and in the third place, it is intended to provide, in terms of race, who is allowed to use public facilities and who is not. I think this is an accurate description of the aims of the legislation. I find confirmation for it in the debate which took place when the legislation was originally introduced in this House. I quote what was said by the then Minister of the Interior, Dr. Dönges (Hansard, Vol. 71, col. 2500)—

A little further on, Dr. Dönges says—

A little further on he says (col. 2501)—

This, then, is just to confirm that one of the aims is to determine who is allowed to use public facilities, where they may live, etc. The second point—which concerns racial purity and racial segregation—was very clearly motivated at that time by Mr. J. J. Fouché, who later became one of our State Presidents. He said (Hansard, Vol. 71, col. 2606)—

One of the members on the Government side even referred to the legislation at that time as the Magna Carta of South Africa. This was said by a Mr. Abraham, and I quote him (col. 2620)—

Therefore the objectives are quite clear, and since the measure was passed, this section has frequently been amended the better to realize the original objectives of the legislation. In this way, we had an attempt in 1962 to define more clearly who and what a White person was.

In 1967 there was another attempt to define even more exactly who a White person was, who a Bantu was and who a Coloured was. During that year, descent was inserted for the first time as a criterion for determining what your identity actually was. In 1969, the staff of the department that had to classify people according to this Act was expanded, and in 1970, a new form of identity document was issued and the old one was withdrawn.

In the whole process, with all these amendments, appeal to any court, person or body became almost futile because the definition was so precise that no one could get past it. Everyone was classified on the basis of descent according to his race or ethnic group.

This Act, and especially section 5, is also, amongst other things, the cornerstone of discriminatory measures introduced by the Government which are an embarrassment for South Africa abroad and have also created and are still creating tension and friction inside the country. Without this measure, the Separate Amenities Act cannot operate; nor can the Group Areas Act, nor the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. The same applies to section 16 of the Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Political Interference Act and so on. In other words, it forms the actual legal infrastructure or cornerstone of all these other measures. Without this measure it would be impossible for the Government to lay down where one is allowed to marry, live, work, move, sit, eat or sleep. With this Act the Government can compartmentalize South Africa into the various groups, separated according to race and ethnicity. Therefore, if the Government says that it wishes to move away from race discrimination and it does not reconsider section 5 of this Act, it simply cannot be taken seriously, because this is the measure which makes all these other discriminatory measures legally possible.

The Government may defend itself by saying that this measure is necessary to maintain order and stability in South Africa. The simple truth is that if order and stability have to be brought about by tyranny, there is a built-in threat to order and stability. So the question can be asked: Have group area removals created more contentment and stability in South Africa? Has mutual understanding been promoted in terms of the Immorality Act? Have apartheid notices been conducive to mutual respect? True order and stability arise only from voluntary acceptance of and subjection to the social order, and this measure makes it legally impossible. Therefore this measure is in the long run the greatest threat to order and stability.

The Government may advance a further defence by saying that this measure is necessary because South Africa has a plural population and identities have to be protected. In point of fact, this legislation is a direct negation of the plurality of our society. The outstanding characteristic of plural societies is that cultural and ethnic groups voluntarily group and organize themselves. The best example of this in our society is the Afrikaner himself. They mobilized themselves without any legal obligation and they pursued and achieved political power through the NP. But when the Afrikaner had obtained this power, he denied others the freedom he had claimed for himself by deciding for them to which groups they had to belong.

Here lies the fundamental difference between us and the Government. It is based on a standpoint of principle on this matter. The official Opposition says that there must be voluntary association of groups in South Africa. The Government argues that there must be a forced association. Therefore the Government’s lectures on the principle of ethnicity are absolute nonsense. I should like to illustrate this …

[Inaudible.]

Mr. Speaker, if that hon. member could only bring the sounds issuing from his mouth to correspond with the limitation of his understanding, I could proceed in perfect silence.

I want to illustrate my statement by quoting what the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs said in this House last year. I quote (Hansard, 1978, col. 8569)—

If we carefully analyse this argument advanced by the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs, we find that he is actually wide of the mark. If it is true that the average Xhosa will not vote for the average Zulu, no legislation is required to force a Xhosa to vote for a Xhosa. For then it is part of the reality in which we find ourselves. If there is really a plural society in South Africa, the average Xhosa is bound to vote for a Xhosa and the average Zulu is bound to vote for a Zulu. The moment, however, that someone is forced by means of legislation such as this, the voluntary association of that person, his ability to decide for himself to which ethnic group he wishes to belong and whether he wishes to belong to such ethnic group at all, is denied him. I am not sucking this point out of my thumb. It is found in all handbooks on ethnicity. I want to quote from a book which the hon. member for Cape Town Gardens often quotes from very approvingly in this House. This book is Ethnicity, Theory and Experience by Nathan Glazer and Daniel T. Moynihan. They say on p. 19—

And then the very well-known sociologist Talcott Parsons says the following in giving a definition of an ethnic group—

There we have it! If we are in fact a plural society, our argument on this side of the House is: Let us see what the nature of that plurality is by giving people the right to associate voluntarily and to decide which groupings they want to support and in what way they want to support those groupings. If we fail to do so, we are denying the reality in South Africa. This is an accepted fact One need only go back in history. When Governments deliberately try to bend reality in a society in order to realize their own particular and limited aims, they are usually faced with conflict and they collapse. This is one of the dilemmas with which we are faced. The dilemma is that the way in which this kind of measure is being implemented in our ethnic and racial relations in South Africa is creating more conflict and friction than anything else.

However, there is another dilemma as well, and I can quite understand the Government’s dilemma in this respect. This measure is the foundation of quite a number of State bureaucracies in South Africa. Without it, the Department of Coloured Relations, the Department of Indian Affairs, the Department of Community Development, the Department of Plural Relations, the Department of National Education, etc., could not really ascertain who their clients were. For this reason, we have in the course of time built up an enormous bureaucracy, a bureaucracy based on the basic philosophy and premise contained in this piece of legislation. Briefly it can be said, therefore, that this measure provides jobs to many thousands of people. Without it, the Government cannot get along, and with it, we are all in trouble, because it is the legal root of discrimination in South Africa. If we really want a fruitful debate about the meaning of moving away from discrimination, I believe that this House should not close its eyes to this type of measure. It has been hanging around our neck in South Africa like a bell for almost 30 years, and time and again it embarrasses us. We cannot pretend that discrimination is something about which we can decide unilaterally. Discrimination is something which is experienced by people who are subjected to measures they do not like. We must debate with those people. As long as the Government refuses to reconsider certain of these fundamental measures, we cannot get off the ground. For two reasons it is important to us in this House that this section should be reconsidered. The one is in order to initiate fruitful debate in South Africa about the meaning of moving away from discrimination, and the second is truly to determine what the nature of group relations in South Africa should be.

In advocating its policy, the Government always talks about the multi-national nature of South Africa. It is said that there are various nations and that these nations want to preserve their identity, etc. But if the Government really believes this, it does not need a measure such as this one. I sometimes think that the Government is not serious, for when we state our standpoints from our side, suddenly South Africa no longer consists of nations. Then it just consists of a Black majority. However, how can South Africa consist of a Black majority if the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs says that a Xhosa will never vote for a Zulu? If there are a lot of minorities, how can there be a Black majority? Demographically, there may be a Black majority, but in terms of the logic of the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs, there can never be a Black majority politically, because the various Black groups will never vote for one another. If that is true, the Government should have the courage of its convictions to allow this to happen, but the Government can only do so if it is prepared to repeal measures such as this one. That is basically the philosophy and the premise which lie at the root of this legislation.

However, we are not only concerned with the philosophy or with general premises; we are also concerned with sorrow and suffering. I do not want to say a great deal about it, but in this connection I personally know of many people who find themselves in the most wretched social circumstances and who have made a mistake in good faith by marrying the wrong person, for example. Then, when they apply for reclassification, they find that there is no way out of their difficulty. I just want to quote one example. I shall not mention the name of the person concerned. I addressed the following letter in this connection to the then Deputy Minister of the Interior—

I enclosed all the relevant documents—

I may just mention that the wife of this man was pregnant and deeply upset. After eight months I received the following reply—

The department did not explain its decision. This, then, is the reply I must send that man. Now I must tell the man: “I do not know why it is so.” I fully motivated the case, but this is the letter I have to send to him. The baby had been born in the meantime and therefore had to be classified as a Coloured. However, they live in a White residential area, they have White friends and all the other things that go with this. There are many other cases which I could quote.

The Government is always accusing the Opposition and other people of being unpatriotic because they embarrass South Africa, but nothing could embarrass us more outside and inside this country than this kind of behaviour, and therefore I think it is urgently necessary for the sake of us all in this country that the Government reconsider this matter. I can best summarize my speech by pointing to the opinion expressed by an Opposition speaker about this measure when it was before this House. I quote him (Hansard, 13 March 1950, col. 2790)—

It is the present hon. Minister of Community Development who used those words as an Opposition speaker almost 30 years ago. It so happens that I still agree with those words, even though the hon. the Minister no longer agrees with himself.

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. member for Rondebosch. He is a man who can argue his case well. However, he will not take it amiss of me if I say that although he does it to the best of his ability, he is not always convincing. He argues his case well, but he does not argue it convincingly. The question is not whether the Act concerned or other laws are implemented in such or such a way. The motion says that we should consider whether or not section 5 of the Population Registration Act should remain on the Statute Book at all. One cannot throw out the baby with the bath-water. I am interested in the question of whether this section, as it appears on the Statute Book at present, should remain there in the interests of all the inhabitants of South Africa.

I want to point out that section 5 does not say a word about discrimination or about superiority or inferiority. People read things into the section which are not there. Section 4 of the Act provides that everyone who lives in South Africa should be entered into a register. Surely it is quite clear that we want to know who lives in South Africa. [Interjections.] We also want to know who the Whites are that are living here. If one has a register, surely one has to do something with it; one has to enter the names of people in it. What do we say in the Act? We argue that the names of people should be entered on an ethnic basis, because it is a fact that there are groups in South Africa. We are giving expression to a fact concerning the composition of our population. There is no discrimination whatsoever. We do it in a factual and correct way. In composing such a register, it is also possible that there may be oversights and that mistakes may be made. Provision has been made for machinery by means of which the mistakes can be corrected, even retrospectively back to 7 July 1950. Administratively, therefore, such a section is essential. It is fact of life.

I now want to refer to section 6, which provides that every person must have an identity number, etc. The word “classification” is a descriptive one, but I should prefer us to speak of an identification of groups. The Whites are therefore identified as a group on an ethnic basis, while the Bantu in turn can be identified on the basis of ethnic and other groups. The emphasis I give to this group aspect is important. I shall refer to it again later. It is very easy to create groups. The Ndebele, for example, now become the South Sotho. The position in this case is that the State President can create a group by proclamation. In other words, this whole section 5 is one which was created for the identification of groups. It is a very simple objective which this Act has in view. The Opposition must not read into it something which is not there.

By whom are they identified?

This is simply the way it is. I shall react presently to the speech made by the hon. member. He has the right to reply as well, and I request him to wait a few minutes before asking me a question if he wants to.

The purpose of this Act is to provide for the composition of a register of the population of the Republic. That is all it is really concerned with. I want to ask the hon. member for Rondebosch—he is still going to reply—whether he wants the registration of people and the identification of groups in South Africa. The important question is whether he wants the identification of groups in South Africa.

It is his policy, after all.

It is his policy, as the hon. member for Brakpan rightly remarks. It is precisely the policy of the PFP to identify every possible group or section. How is one going to identify a population group if one does not create the machinery for doing so?

I have referred to what it does say in section 5, but I also want to state briefly what it does not say. Section 5 contains no proviso for White domination and no disparagement of other groups. Nor does the word “discrimination” appear anywhere in it. In fact, it cannot, because the NP’s policy, whether or not those hon. gentlemen want to believe it, is precisely to move away from discrimination on grounds of race and colour, at the greatest possible speed. When we consider this whole situation and we ask ourselves in which direction we have been moving since 1950, it becomes clear that we have moved away from discrimination to such an extent that nations have become free and that other nations are going to ask us for their freedom. The foundation of the NP’s policy, the thread which runs through it, is that we regard all the nations as equal. At the moment we are the people who have to take the lead. As the old Roman said, we are the primus inter pares. We are the first among equals and therefore we have to take the lead. Those hon. members may regard it as discrimination because to them, everything is coloured by discrimination, but it is not our policy.

What is the true objective of this Act? What are we doing in terms of this section? We are creating identity groups, and when we have created an identity group, we create for that group the opportunity to elect a leader. If there is no group, surely no leader can emerge from that group. We must create leaders so that the leaders emerging from the groups may lead their groups in order that every group may fulfil its aspirations, whatever those aspirations may be.

Pure paternalism.

If it aspires to become independent, why should it not become independent? If there are no groups, where would the leaders come from? If there are no groups or if they are not identified, it is quite impossible for a group to become independent. A prerequisite for a group’s independence is the identification of that group.

By someone else?

I shall come to that. The premise of the NP is precisely that we must identify groups, and that we must identify them on an ethnic basis.

You discriminate.

That hon. member says that we discriminate. That hon. member should go and read his party’s constitution; perhaps he helped to draft it. I want him to read what it says on page 12—

Those people, the PFP, say that the basic point of departure for a political interest is in fact the ethnic group. Is that correct?

Do you object to that?

No, I do not object I agree with that hon. member. However, if we identify ethnic groups and if we classify the people, what is actually the objection? [Interjections.] I shall go a little further. The basis of differentiation of groups is in fact ethnicity. What is said on page 9 of this book of the PFP? On page 9 of this blue book it says something which they may not want to hear, but I am going to read it to them in any case—

Ethnic groups are the most important and they also concede that this is so. If it is really true that they consider ethnicity to be a criterion for group formation, I really cannot understand what the objection to section 5 is. If an objection to section 5 is not logically possible, there is one alternative, i.e. that they do not really want ethnic groups. Therefore I now want to ask those hon. members why they do not want to allow it.

Their policy is dishonest. Their policy says that they want to allow ethnicity, but on the other hand the PFP says that we should not form groups. Why not? The reason is simply that if there are no ethnic groups, people can never attain independence. Their intention, therefore, is never to grant independence to the Black people in South Africa. They do not want to; they cannot. That is the point which the leaders must realize. This is the lack of credibility which we find in the PFP. On the one hand they promise the Black people that they will remove race discrimination, but that is not true, because on the other hand they want to make it impossible for them to achieve the highest aspiration of every nation, independence.

I want to refer to something which was said in an article written by the hon. member for Rondebosch in the magazine Deurbraak of 28 February. I read the following from this article—

So there will be no segregation in residential areas. The Indians will go and live among the Zulus in Zululand and the Zulus will go and live among the Indians. The same applies to schools, so anyone will be able to attend the tribal schools of the Xhosas. Can hon. members believe that such a policy can ever be sold? Surely it can never be sold. To be able to sell, one needs an article to sell, after all. The hon. member for Yeoville gave the assurance a few years ago that schools would not be affected, but now he says that there should be no differentiation between people in schools.

The real sting in this article in Deurbraak is not, I believe, the fact that they are opposed to separate development, because they are not opposed to separateness. The PFP is a party of rich people and therefore they can buy their separateness. However, they fear development, because that would endanger their privileged position as rich people. They are opposed to the development of the Black man, precisely because they fear it Because they are a party of rich people, they are opposed to the development of the Black man, and that is in fact what the motion is concerned with. [Interjections.]

When one looks at almost everything which those hon. members do, at their constitutions and their actions, for example, one gains the impression that the PFP lacks all credibility as a party. This is so because they say that they are going to hold a convention, and at the same time they say that everyone must know that if they want section 5 of the legislation concerned to be repealed, it will take a very long time. They therefore promise the inhabitants of South Africa a pie in the sky. Therefore it is a pie in the sky policy. The NP policy in this connection is very simple. Our attitude is to give the people whatever they ask, for if they ask for independence, they get it. We do not hold out a pie in the sky to them. The whole idea of holding a convention in the long term is a pie in the sky.

The PFP is trying to bluff the population of South Africa. They say that they want to repeal section 5 of the legislation because its provisions are not really necessary, because, they go on to say, we must bear in mind that a minority group of between 10% and 15% will have a veto. According to the PFP, this will be an identified group, but they are not going to identify them, because they are against section 5. This group of between 10% and 15% will then have a veto, or so they say. We are concerned here with a change of policy. At the moment, the majority in the House of Assembly, i.e. more than 50%, has a veto. Therefore the majority has a veto. Those hon. members are now proposing that the minority should have a veto. To the leaders of groups outside this House I want to put the following question: How can you lead your groups to independence or maturity if you are obstructed by a veto by 10% of the people living in your areas? It simply cannot be done.

By the way, I wondered why this strange figure of 10% to 15% had been decided upon. I watched the hon. members on the opposite side and I saw that the hon. member for Yeoville and the hon. member for Sandton were birds of a feather. They have been associates for a long time. Two out of seventeen is exactly between 10% and 15%, and that is what the party looks like which is ruled by a minority veto.

Now I want to continue in a different vein. These people do not want to identify race groups. They say section 5 is wrong. These people say there should be cross-cutting affiliations. They say—

To put it differently, one should therefore be able to affiliate wherever one wishes. I want to suggest to the hon. member for Rondebosch that this is where he is making a mistake. There is no such thing as free association. If you can associate with whoever you wish to, if you can join whatever association you like, does the association not have the right to say that it does not want you?

What about the Rand Club?

Yes, what about the Rand Club? Surely we cannot just say that people may join whatever association they want to. We cannot grant the right of free association without saying that the other people still have the right to choose whom they want to admit to their ranks. Surely this is so.

However, I want to go further. These people say—and this is what bothers me …

Order! Which people is the hon. member talking about when he says “these people”?

Mr. Speaker, let me rather put it differently and say that the PFP’s congress says so.

Very well, the hon. member may proceed.

There is another aspect I want to refer to. On page 16 the PFP’s booklet says the following—

Can we imagine what movement there is in South Africa which cuts across affiliations, which flows through all possible ethnic groups, and which represents a minority? That movement, which is not presently represented in this House, which is excluded from this House by legislation? When one begins to think of this, one says to oneself that one would like to compliment the hon. member for Houghton on this piece of work in her little blue book. Under these circumstances, people with communist leanings can participate in their convention and also in the proceedings in this House. It is so. The hon. member for Parktown shakes his head. I can hear it over here. It is so. [Interjections.]

The PFP’s lack of credibility is outrageous. I should like to draw the attention of the homeland leaders to one aspect. It is the following. If the basis for a veto is between 10% and 15%, will the Indian group have a veto? Will the Vendas have a veto? Will the Swazis have a veto? Will the Ndebele have a veto? No. I could go on in this way. There will be only two groups, as it were, that can have a veto. They will be the Whites and the Zulus. Is this not discrimination of the worst kind? After all, there will now be statutory discrimination against minority groups. It will be statutory discrimination, because they are being deprived of the possibility—just listen to this, perhaps hon. members of the Opposition will understand—of becoming independent. This is the first possibility which they are being deprived of. Now they will not be able to become independent. They are not a group. Now it is said that all the others have vetoes, but that one group, which is in fact an ethnic group, will not have a veto. Surely this is discrimination.

Before the previous election the PFP had a policy. However, when we took them to the people and the people saw the faults in their policy, they changed it. When we have finished with them in this debate, they will have to change their policy once again. [Interjections.] They will change their policy once again. They do not have a policy. Their policy comes from overseas. [Interjections.] Their policy, like the motion we are now debating, is bound to fail, and for several reasons. It has been drawn up by people—I am not trying to be funny; I am trying to state facts—who have become alienated from their background, alienated from their traditions as well. They are now trying to join another group. They are trying hard, but they are not welcome. They are simply not succeeding. There are hon. members sitting among them—some of them with grey heads—who will know what I am talking about. They know what I am talking about. They are not at home anywhere. [Interjections.]

Kowie!

I did not mention any names. [Interjections.] The fact of the matter is that if one does not have nationalism, if one does not identify with one’s people, one does not feel the heart-beat of Africa. Those who draw up this thing never realized that. My time has almost expired, and there was something else I wanted to say. [Interjections.] I am sorry about it, although it does not seem to me that hon. members on the other side are sorry. I wanted to say why they are the internal wing of certain groups in America. I want to tell the people and South Africa that the National Party placed section 5 on the Statute Book to bring about the independence of nations and to give every nation sovereignty over its own people and the right to maintain its identity as it sees fit. We are not forcing anyone to become independent, although we believe it to be in the interests of South Africa. Therefore there can be no question of ever repealing section 5 of this Act under the present circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, we are looking forward to the opportunity we will have to hold an in-depth discussion on the constitutional plans of the Government as well as our own. I hope that we are going to have such an opportunity in the near future. However, that is not the matter under discussion today. All I am going to say to the hon. member who has just resumed his seat is that if he would only take the trouble to take a look across the border at South West Africa he will see how White people, Brown people and Black groups are becoming independent without race classification. If he had done that he would never have made the speech he did this afternoon because his whole point of departure is wrong.

The question before us this afternoon is a very simple one. We are living in a country which contains a diversity of peoples, population groups, nations—whatever one wants to call them. Our country is a multi-national country with a diversity of cultural identities. This diversity is an historic fact and has nothing to do with the policy of any political party nor with the legislation of any government. Just like the rest of Africa and by far the majority of countries in the world, South Africa’s population is in fact a collection of tribes, some more modern than others, but tribes whose identity is determined by their language, religion, descent, history and so on. There is nothing that will ever change that basic situation. In the course of history there has hardly been a single tribe in all the world that has not had its expatriates. The Afrikaner people itself developed from a succession of expatriates from various European tribes who gathered here and formed a new people with its own language and characteristics of its own.

Later in our own history we had Afrikaners who became British or anglicized. One also encountered English people who became Afrikaans. There was also a mixing across the colour line, and for more than 300 years this occurred freely and openly. However, none of this altered the basic multi-national structure of South Africa, nor did it alter the existence, survival or identity of the various peoples or tribes. The survival of a people depends upon itself. It depends on its inherent will to continue to survive as a people, and not because anyone else should identity himself as such. I sat together with the late Dr. Diederichs in this House in the days when he was still here. At the time I asked him to sign for me one of the books he wrote in 1938, entitled Die Kommunisme. What he wrote in it, is interesting. He wrote—

That is very true and is a valuable piece of Africana. A people can only murder itself.

What about Cambodia?

I do not know what the hon. member is talking about. When was the hon. member there? Has he been there recently?

Our objection is that one of the peoples in South Africa, the White people, has made a law, with the aid of the political power it has obtained over all the others, in accordance with which it seeks to classify, register and compartmentalize all the peoples in South Africa, on the basis of its own, the Whites’, ideas, as if the history of humanity had achieved its final form. He must remain within the national compartment in which he has been placed and registered by the wisdom of this one people. He must remain there, unless the Secretary of the Interior, by way of special and merciful exception, gives him the special right to change his cultural milieu. There is no appeal to the court. Every man’s life revolves around this classification. It determines his living rights, limits his right of ownership, circumscribes his work rights, curtails his marriage rights, confines his social freedoms and issues his political rights. I am mentioning only the most important basic rights. This goes to show how basic is this provision of race classification.

You probably read the wrong section.

A person’s whole status and freedom as a human being is determined for the rest of his life by this classification. One people applies and imposes it on all the others, who do not want it.

That applies to the Whites as well.

That is a totally incorrect principle. The simple question we ask is whether any people in South Africa has the right to do that to other peoples living with it in the same country without their co-operation and approval. Has any people in South Africa the right to confine not only itself but all the other peoples in fixed, inflexible categories in terms of an Act which that one people has drafted alone and which it applies to all the others on the basis of its own wishes and ideas? I think that the answer is obviously no. It is morally wrong. It is wrong in essence. It is still more wrong if one considers what the consequences are for the peoples.

All the statutory discrimination that still exists in the country, rests on one foundation stone, viz. the race classification requirement contained in section 5 of the Population Registration Act. The evils that that has given rise to, and still gives rise to, are well known. However, I wish to mention a few. The removal of people from their homes and places where they and their families wish to live and have lived for generations but may now no longer live due to the colour under which they are classified; the unnatural division of families—there are many cases of this in the Coloured community, together with the heartbreak and bitterness it gives rise to; the existence of race classification boards on which a panel of three people has to decide on the entire future of doubtful cases.

If the decision must be taken on one of these race classification boards concerning where someone is to be placed, they must take the following factors into account—his habits, education, speech, general attitude and conduct. We know what all this means. What could possibly be more humiliating to people? It must be borne in mind that the classification is not merely between White, Coloured and Black. In terms of a proclamation of 1959 the people living between the Whites and the Blacks are classified as “Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua, Indian, Chinese, other Asiatics and other Coloureds”. Therefore there are people in the country that, due to the wishes of hon. members on the other side of the House and the decision of the Government, are classified and identified as “Other Asiatics and Other Coloureds”—whatever that may mean. They are therefore “non-people”. That is a humiliating provision in our legislation.

The Griquas are just as proud of their identity as you are.

We are aware of all the outrageous incidents that have taken place over the past 28 years due to the implementation of section 16 of the Immorality Act. This section has little to do with immorality but everything to do with colour discrimination. We are aware of the devastation of human lives that this has caused and is still causing. All this is based on one section.

What has that to do with clause 5?

It has to do with classification because if there was no classification …

You are just as wrong as the hon. member for Rondebosch.

Then we should like to be corrected. If there were no classification of people, the other legislation could not exist.

You are wrong on that score.

Then we should like to have the hon. the Minister’s guidance.

I shall help you.

Good. [Interjections.] If that is so, I hope the hon. the Minister will rise today and tell us that we have a case and that the legislation can be abolished.

It is quite unnecessary to do so.

I want to say to the hon. the Minister that the whole discriminatory structure is based, firstly, on the classification of people. It is in accordance with that that decisions are taken as to where someone must live, etc. All his freedoms arise out of that. If that is not so, then I should like to hear the facts.

The provision is unique in the world, a provision around which a unique system of discrimination has been built. What we as South Africans, in these very troubled and dangerous times, will have to face squarely is the fact that discrimination will never come to an end and can never be removed in our country as long as we have a system in which people are classified according to race, because that is the foundation stone of all discrimination. Therefore, no assurance we give to the people and nations of South Africa or to the outside world of our wish to eliminate discrimination can be complied with as long as this provision continues to exist.

In 1974 South Africa officially and voluntarily gave the Security Council an assurance, and I quote—

It also gave the undertaking that it would do everything in its power to move away from it. We applauded this. The words “does not condone” are significant to us. It is also said—

That undertaking was stated in black and white for the Security Council by the Government.

Classification is not discrimination.

That was the Government’s finest hour. I do acknowledge that a great deal of progress has been made, and we are of course pleased about the progress that has been made since then. The most exciting progress has of course been made in the field we have always had under our care, and that is South West Africa, where an open community is today coming into being, an open community which is accepted by the White Afrikaner and by the English-speaking and German-speaking people as if it had always been so. There are no problems there. Their normal way of life is continuing as if nothing of significance has changed. As far as we in the Republic are concerned, however, it remains a fact that unless we eventually abolish race discrimination there will never be an end to the problems of our country. That is what we hope to hear today from the hon. the Minister. We know things cannot happen overnight, nor do we expect it. We want to see things being done in an orderly fashion, but at the same time we want the assurance that we shall reach the point at which there will be a planned removal of discrimination, a removal that goes to the source or foundations of the existing system.

To us who sit on this side of the House, what happens inside our country is far more important than what happens outside it, but we also realize that the two are related. We shall only have peace from outside if there is peace among our people within South Africa. However, we shall not have either of the two if colour discrimination is not effectively and totally abolished. The onslaught from outside is becoming worse, more extensive and more dangerous. The Government has just decided to send a young Afrikaner, the hon. member for Johannesburg West, to London to represent South Africa. I want to congratulate him on his appointment and wish him everything of the best. He is going to be assisted by a very charming and able wife. What, however, do we do to these people who now have to go to the court of St. James? We are sending to the court of St. James an ambassador with chains around his legs, as long as there is still statutory discrimination in South Africa. We are sending his wife abroad with, in a political sense, concrete blocks as ear-rings.

Come now, really.

I know what I am talking about.

You are speaking the language of our enemies.

Years ago Dr. Connie Mulder, the hon. member for Klip River—he will remember the occasion—two others and myself visited Britain for a month at the invitation of the British Government. That was shortly before Dr. Connie Mulder became a Minister. I think that he subsequently became Minister of Information. We were entertained on the last evening before our departure for home. It was a very special reception around a table arranged by the Foreign Office. All the most important questions at that table concerned discriminatory laws, measures such as the Immorality Act, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, race classification, enforced separation—petty apartheid. The majority of questions were not put to me because I am not a member of the Government; the majority of questions were put to Dr. Mulder. What struck me was his total inability—I say it with sympathy—to defend and explain effectively apartheid measures such as those I have mentioned.

Now you are talking nonsense.

It is not only he who was unable to do so. No one can do so. I have not yet encountered a man who can do it.

Why are you now speaking behind his back? He is no longer here.

Whose fault is that?

When Dr. Mulder subsequently became Minister of Information I wondered how, as far as one’s information officers were concerned, one could …

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question?

No, unfortunately my time is too short. I wondered how one could expect of one’s information officers that they should overcome such obstacles and build up an image for South Africa with this kind of thing, shackling them as even the political leaders who make the laws are unable to do.

If discrimination is not removed in its entirety then our biggest problems will not come from outside, but from within. The Government will find that it will get nowhere with its constitutional proposals if the new constitution it envisages is based on old discriminatory laws. That is the basis of the misgivings of the Coloureds and the Indians. Even among the moderate Coloureds and Indians one finds the fear that if they accept the new constitution based on race classification, group areas and so on, it will entrench discrimination against them and will in practice elevate their group areas to the status of political homelands. The point I am making is that co-operation, a good understanding, good relations between us and the various population groups in South Africa will only come into being to the extent that the climate is created for it and discrimination is removed. The starting point for all order in the future, if we really want order, is the abolition of this and all other statutory discrimination.

One notes that every time we discuss this matter with the Government in all sincerity, they grasp at a fig leaf, viz. the fig leaf of identity. That is nothing but a smoke-screen. There is no people whose identity depends on statutory discriminatory measures. There has never been any prohibition of mixed marriages between the Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking sections, nor among the Cape Coloureds, the Malays, the Indians, the Chinese and the Black peoples. Language, religion, customs and so on ensured that the various groups retained their identities naturally. At the conclusion of the no-confidence debate last Friday, the hon. the Minister of Labour referred to the place of nationhood in the history of the world. He then made this interesting statement (Hansard, 9 February, col. 434)—

He went on to say (Hansard, 9 February 1979, col. 425)—

That is us—

He was referring here to the issue of nationhood which they could not get away from. No one tries to do that, because of course one cannot get away from it He was largely right, but then he came along with his charge against us which is in fact a contradiction of what he had just said and what I have just quoted. I quote (Hansard, 9 February 1979, col. 433)—

It is strange that when the Government holds conferences with Black, Coloured and Indian leaders, conferences which are all in fact minor conventions in their own right, then that is in order, but when we want to hold the same kind of conference with the leaders of all the population groups, then that is evil. The hon. the Minister went on to say (Hansard, 9 February 1979, col. 433)—

That was an extremely unworthy statement by the hon. the Minister. Is he bringing a charge against the Zulus, the Xhosas, the Hindus, the Indians, the Malays, the Griquas and all the other peoples? Is he really charging them and their leaders with wishing to help to wipe out their character? There is no such thing. I do not know of a single leader who would want to try to wipe out his people’s character. What hope have they to succeed in that? The hon. the Minister himself said that they could not hope to succeed. The hon. the Minister answered himself. No one even wants to try that. An artificial effort of this nature would not even succeed because it is too ridiculous for words. The fact is that this charge is merely an apology and a fig leaf behind which the Government wishes to continue implementing its discriminatory measures.

Our diversity of peoples is a fact, and our cultural diversity will continue to exist, even more so in an open community than in the present apartheid community. No one has anything against diversity, nor against people retaining their identity. I know of no people that would give up its identity and commit suicide. What we are opposed to, however, is the fact that the existence of diversity and various identities is used in politics as an excuse for discrimination and for an unnatural compartmentalization, confinement and limitation of natural freedom. We shall have to come back to the concept of freedom in our country, freedom in the finest sense of the word, freedom as the early Afrikaners understood it, as we want freedom and peace in this country in the future.

I intend introducing a South African Bill of Rights here next week by way of a private Bill. It is to be hoped that that will afford us the opportunity to discuss the whole matter of discrimination further and in greater depth in this session.

Mr. Speaker, listening to the hon. members for Rondebosch and Bezuidenhout, one has little doubt that this motion is merely a further effort to bring about unconditional integration in all facets of life in South Africa as soon as possible. I want to say to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout that I think the time has come for him and his party not always to view the concepts “Brown, Black, Coloured and Bantu” as discriminatory swear words. I believe that the time has come when the concepts “Coloured, Person of Colour, Black and Brown” can be used as a mark of respect towards the groups represented by those concepts. Why are people always trying to make political capital out of sociological and anthropological terminology land to drive a wedge between various population groups in this country?

In the nature of the matter, the Erika Theron report is an authoritative report. The commission carried out an investigation into all the facets of the relations between White and Brown. One finds that that commission on which six Brown people served had no fault to find with the idea of classification. One then finds that it was indeed that commission that investigated the way of life of the Coloureds, and that they made no recommendation concerning the scrapping of section 5. They made no recommendation to repeal the whole Act. Now the PFP, that represents only a few people in South Africa, wants to repeal section 5.

I want to dwell for a moment on the motion of the hon. member for Rondebosch because I believe that this motion is not only half-hearted and ambiguous, but moreover is inherently unjustified. It is very clear that the principle aim of the repeal of section 5 is that the hon. member would like to bring about a situation in which it would not be necessary to mention in the population register whether an individual was White, Coloured or Black. I believe that that is the true aim of his motion. However, if one further analyses the motion and the Act, one would also have to consider what would remain in that Act if one repealed section 5. In the first instance, it is interesting that the member in question did not propose the repeal of the Act as a whole. The definitions of “Bantu, White and Coloured” in terms of section 1 remain. They are retained. In other words, the hon. member is satisfied to retain those definitions.

Nonsense!

The hon. member did not give notice of their repeal. This also means that the composition of the Population Register in terms of section 2 will remain unaltered. He only wants to repeal section 5. This also means that he is in favour of the distinction drawn between Whites, Bantu and Coloureds. Is that so or is that not so? Silence. If it is not so, then he has worded his motion incorrectly. What else is the situation?

Let us go further. If section 5 alone is repealed, then according to section 3, names have to be entered in the Population Register in terms of the information required by the provisions of section 3, namely the information contained in the census forms. Every individual must indicate on the census forms to what population group he belongs. That section still stands. If one goes further one finds that sections 1 and 2 make provision for the classification of an individual into a specific population groups in terms of the definition of the words “appearance and acceptance”. This is not being repealed; this remains.

If one takes this further then I believe that the Opposition is in a dilemma, because they obviously worded their motion wrongly. Obviously they want to remove classification in terms of section 5 but retain classification in terms of sections 1, 2 and 3. Then the dilemma becomes far worse because in the same process they are also doing away with the individual’s primary right of appeal to the Secretary in terms of section 5(4)(c), and this also means that the person is totally unable to object in terms of this clause. I believe that this has become a fiasco. Must I now discuss a motion which has become a fiasco, a motion which is not justifiable in law? Must I discuss a motivation which in fact concerns a motion which should have been worded differently? Is it now my task to motivate that?

I can only listen to the motivation of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and the hon. member for Rondebosch and I can only try to deduce what they meant thereby, and what they said is illuminating. I believe that the intention, with reference to what they said, is very clear if one looks back at the past few years and considers the private members’ motions of which notice has been given by the Opposition every year. In 1976 notice was given of a motion for repeal of laws based on statutory discrimination on the basis of race and colour. In other words, the aim was open residential areas and the establishment of a pure open community. In the following year, 1977, their private member’s motion envisaged the repeal of the Prohibition of Political Interference Act. In other words, their aim was an integrated political structure for South Africa. In 1978 notice was given of the repeal of the Mixed Marriages Act and the repeal of section 16 of the Immorality Act. In other words, the aim was a fully integrated community. In 1979 they are proposing that the classification of population groups must be done away with. They do not, therefore, wish to recognize a factual situation. If one relates this to the motivation we have heard from hon. members on that side of the House this afternoon it is very clear that all this signifies is imposing of assimilation on colour groups that differ from each other in tradition, culture, way of life and descent. It is also very clear that this will further lead to the tremendous risk of disturbance of the peace and the causing of friction and disorder. It is also clear that their aim is nothing but the introduction of open communities, open schools, open residential areas and everything else that is open.

While discussing their aim in this regard I should like to put a few questions in this regard: Is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition prepared to spell out all these aims clearly in his constituency, Sea Point? More social evils are apparent in Sea Point than in any other constituency in the country and there is even a motion on the Order Paper arising out of the social evils that prevail there. There is also a greater concentration of legal and illegal Brown and Black families there than in any other high population density area in the whole of South Africa. Sea Point’s inhabitants are sick and tired of the increasing irritations caused by this kind of evil. I should like to put the following six questions to the hon. Opposition. I hope the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will reply to my questions. In the first place I want to ask him …

Does the hon. member for Cape Town Gardens not enter the picture?

I want to ask the hon. member for Sea Point: Is he prepared to do away with population classification and throw open the entire Sea Point as an open residential area for White, Brown and Black?

Yes. Including the whole of South Africa.

Good. Is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition prepared to throw open all the facilities, the swimming bath, the beaches and all the parks on an unlimited basis?

Yes, of course.

In the third place: Is the hon. leader prepared to throw open his political party in his constituency so that White, Brown and Black can join it? What is his reply?

Yes.

Is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition prepared to throw open restaurants, hotels, hospitals, sports clubs, public baths and dance hall to all population groups without discrimination? [Interjections.] The hon. member says “Yes”. Now we are getting closer to the truth.

Is the hon. the Leader also prepared to permit people to court, to marry, to do what they like, to live together and have children who will go to school in an unrestricted fashion, irrespective of the colour bar? [Interjections.] An hon. members says “of course”. Is the hon. member prepared, in view of the present social evils, to permit an uncontrolled Black influx into Sea Point? What is his reply? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is no longer replying to my questions because he is now getting into a confrontation with his voters.

I believe that one also has to test the motion against certain clauses and findings of the Erika Theron Commission. This expert commission made certain findings, and after having investigated population classification, recommended that a new comprehensive category entitled “Coloured” should be introduced. Does the hon. official Opposition differ from the findings of the Erika Theron Commission? These findings were accepted by 15 votes to three.

Do you disagree with that?

Do the hon. members know better than the Erika Theron Commission?

Have you accepted the findings of the Erika Theron Commission yet?

In the second place, the Erika Theron Commission found that Coloureds, Malays and Griquas complained about penetration by Blacks and Indians. Did the Opposition attach no value to that? In the third place, the Erika Theron Commission recommends that children of mixed descent born out of wedlock must be classified according to the classification of the parent under whose direct control that child falls. This is a recommendation accepted by the Government. Does the PFP differ with an authoritative and expert Erika Theron Commission as to this finding? In the fourth place, the expert Erika Theron Commission nowhere recommends that either section 5 nor the Act as a whole should be repealed.

Nowhere is this recommended. However, the PFP differs with every finding of the Erika Theron Commission. However, when it suits them, they quote ad nauseum from the contents of the report of the Erika Theron Commission. I now wish to dwell for a few moments on the policy of the PFP. When I look at this recent article in which their policy was expounded, an article which appeared in Deurbraak of September 1978—and in passing, I understand that this is the policy which is now for sale at 50 cents—it is very clear that what it aims at is an unconditional sharing of power and an open, integrated or integratable community. However, one interesting aspect is the following terminology that is used—

That says a great deal. Now I just want to show the PFP how ambiguous they are in the implementation of what they advocate in the motion at present before the House. In the exposition of their policy they consistently— and quite understandably—avoid the concepts Brown and Black, and the concepts person of colour and Coloured. See, however, what they use in its place. They make use of a terminology of bluff to say exactly the same thing and then they do so with great verbosity. They do so because they ostensibly do not wish to use discriminatory words. Let us look at what they say. It must be borne in mind that the definition for “Black” and “Coloured” is retained in this Act. What does the PFP say about the national convention? They say that it must be attended by all “political groupings of importance in South Africa”. What are political groupings of importance in South Africa other than colour groups? What else are they? All they are doing is saying the same thing in a roundabout way.

The PFP states that consensus cannot be achieved by way of a simple majority vote. What is a simple majority vote? Is it not merely another description of a Black majority vote or is it not merely a Black majority vote with a few White people included? Let us go further. In this policy of theirs the PFP states: “One group may not be dominated by another.” Now they are working with groups. What does the terminology of “groups” amount to other than a reference to colour groups? What else is it? Who else are these “groups” to whom they refer? Is the SAP a group? Are “groups” not merely another description for “colour groups”? Surely that is very clearly what they mean in this regard.

Then they go on to refer to the domination by Whites of all other groups. They specify Whites. Who, then, are “all the other groups”? Are they, then, not also colour groups? However, the PFP does not have the courage of its convictions to say that they are Blacks or Coloureds or persons of colour. They refer merely to “other groups”. They refer to “group divisions of importance in South Africa”. In the meantime we use the sociological, anthropological terms. We refer to “colour”, and that is a term we use with respect and not in discrimination against the specific group. Are we not in fact dealing here with a form of deception, deception not only in regard to the terminology but also with regard to the motion as it appears on the Order Paper?

The Opposition is consistently making use of the results of classification. It does so by a roundabout use of words and is too afraid to call the thing by its name. That is in fact what the situation is. A year or two ago the hon. the Leader of the Opposition stood up in Parliament and said that there should in fact be a system of population registration and that there should be a system of group identification. Surely this motion is now in diametric conflict with those words. Why should identification take place if it is unnecessary? It is maintained that population classification can also give rise to moral reservations, and probably that is true in a certain sense. However, it is also important to take cognizance of the weight of opinion of the majority of people in South Africa in so far as they believe and are convinced that unless an orderly division takes place, greater friction than is necessary in South Africa could occur.

I think we are living in a exceptionally complicated community, a community which is more heterogeneous than any other community in the world.

Oh no. Far from it.

Does our entire future, then, not rest on this very question of the success or otherwise of dialogue, discussions and consultations in order to bring about joint responsibility and joint accountability with all groups we want to identify in this country, in the most harmonious fashion? Is the true aim of what we are striving for, not to bring about peace in South Africa? Do we not have a specific duty, in such a delicately structured community, to take more trouble than is usual to bring about such a situation? There is no doubt that the motion of the hon. member for Rondebosch is also aimed at the destruction of the Government’s new constitutional proposals. It is also very clear that if he can get away from this classification, if he can confuse the whole situation of White, Brown and Black, then too we shall be unable to continue with this new dispensation. He is all the more concerned because the Freedom Party has given an indication that they accept it in principle. The Labour Party is also speaking to the Government. This is an occasion which has gained momentum in South Africa and now that hon. member is trying to cause this ideal of the Government to come to grief. The Government went to work in a very enlightened fashion to bring about this new dispensation for its people against the will of many people and against the will of some of its own supporters in South Africa, because it was in the interests of the future and the survival of all the people in South Africa.

The fact is that South Africa’s entire future is dependent on the recognition of the human dignity of Brown, Black and White. No distinction may be drawn, since Brown, Black and White must be measured by the same criteria. Is the task not so much greater to continue and ensure that no friction occurs with regard to the classification of the social life in order to bring about an orderly dispensation for the coexistence of White, Brown and Black?

The question is not one of discrimination but of whether all the people of colour in South Africa can be afforded an equitable, equal opportunity to share in the privileges, wealth and also the opportunities of South Africa, not as inferior citizens but as equal citizens. This, too, is the aim of classification, since no connotation of inferiority attaches to the concept, because through this concept respect is shown to each separate population group. Classification occurs not to bring about an anti-Brown or anti-Black feeling but to ensure the harmonious and peaceful existence of multi-nationalism in South Africa. Why should classification always be put forward as something with connotations of inferiority of Brown and Black, and why must the majority of opinion-makers in the country who, by voting at one general election after another, have stated in clear language how they feel about classification, be ignored in order to accept the will of a small minority group in this country who want to bring about unconditional integration in South Africa?

I want to conclude by saying that the motion of the hon. member for Rondebosch is de jure completely wrong. If he wanted to make any sense of his motion he should have moved that the whole Act be repealed, not merely section 5. His dilemma is just that he wants to define White, Brown and Black but does not wish to classify them. The hon. member’s motivation of his incorrect motion de facto does not hold water. He does not want to classify White, Brown and Black but he does want to work with the same groups under other names. Therefore he wants to achieve precisely the same aim but for the sake of appearances he wants the classification provision to be repealed. This motion is de jure quite wrong and moreover it is a smoke-screen. It is merely an effort to intimate to the community at large that he looks after the interests of Black and Brown because he realizes that he needs their support to come to power.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Durbanville at the close of his speech posed the question why classification is automatically associated with discrimination. That is probably the key to this whole debate. I think that nobody in this House will disagree with me when I say that the classification of people into certain groups has had a horrific effect on the lives of some of those people. This classification has had the result of excluding them from enjoying certain advantages. This arises from the fact that the White community in this country has, as a result of history, enjoyed economic and social advantages in every single way one can think of. Classification has come to mean discrimination because it was applied in what one might call border-line cases where such classification of a person could mean an open door to everything that he could want or a closed door to those things which meant that his status was not equal—no matter how one describes it or tries to get away from it—to the status he would have enjoyed if his classification had gone the other way. That is the reason why the concept of discrimination has come to be tired to this legislation and particularly to this section which requires that the Secretary “shall classify” people. I think that the hon. member for Rondebosch was quite right to come to the House with this motion if we are to move away from discrimination.

The hon. member for Durbanville asked a whole lot of questions which we will come back to in a later debate. Every single one of those questions he asked was discriminatory. [Interjections.] If the hon. member considers what I am telling him, he will find that it is true. The question was asked: Are you prepared to share your facilities with people of other race groups? That was the point of the question asked. One is only too grateful to hear that it is the declared intention of the Government to move away from discrimination.

Are you prepared to share your schools?

I will come to that question. I am making the point that in everybody’s mind classification implies a disadvantage to a section of the population and thus has to be regarded as discriminatory.

This debate has taken the course we expected it would. The hon. member for Rondebosch moved the motion and hon. members of the Government have replied, but we have not had any kind of defence of the situation from the Government benches. We have not heard from them the positive aspects of their policy and why they consider it necessary to retain this clause. We have only heard one thing and that is “dit is daar om Blankedom te bewaar”.

Have some patience. I shall reply.

The hon. the Minister asks me to have patience. We will get to that in a moment. What we have to do in this debate is to try to take something positive out of what has happened. We are dealing here with an historical situation. Nobody in this Chamber will deny that there has been, as the result of classification, endless heartache, agony and frustration. In the years of our history during which that Government has been in power, these events have taken place. What we surely ought to be doing, is to try to find whether we can salvage something from the events that have taken place, whether we can achieve something positive out of all the hurt that has taken place and whether we cannot rationalize the situation in which we find ourselves since the Government itself has stated that it is moving away from discrimination.

At a time when hon. members are discussing the policy of a party on this side, we ought to try to find something that can turn the hurt of yesterday into the advantages of tomorrow. We like to think that our party has adopted an attitude that allows this to happen. What we have seen here this afternoon, is the old story of South Africa, namely “die gisterpolitiek”. We have seen two poles: The old apartheid story on that side, race classification and all the questions asked by the hon. member for Durbanville; and on this side we have had members advocating what amounts to an open society. We believe that both those poles stand in a field which is related to the old South Africa from which all of us are moving away, viz. the unitary State which this Parliament represents. What we are now debating is something that is in the process of being phased out and is going to disappear. Even the Government is active in bringing about a change in that situation. In my opinion, what we have to do is to get away from that old story of yesterday, the Black Power/White Power syndrome which conditions all our thinking. Everything we say in this debate, in fact everything we say in any kind of political discussion, is based on the Black Power/ White Power syndrome. I believe, however, that we are reaching a stage where that whole situation is going to fall away and where the realities of pluralism will come to be realized and put into practice.

The pressure to repeal section 5 eminates from the discriminatory results that have followed from its implementation. I do not think anybody here will deny that I should like to invite the House to look at a society in which pluralism is recognized and discrimination is abolished. Surely that is what this debate should be about. If one envisages a society in which pluralism, the reality of our group existence, is recognized and discrimination is abolished, one gets at the point of this whole debate on the motion of the hon. member for Rondebosch. Just think of the positive results that could be achieved in South Africa by the calm acceptance of group identity, the simple acceptance of the fact that there are groups of people who are different and who have to find a way, by negotiation and consensus, of setting up a politico-administrative system which is going to harmonize the interests of all the groups in South Africa. We believe that that is the sort of thing we ought to be trying to bring about.

The hon. member for Barberton asked me about schools. We have put forward the proposal that in the shared area, which is White South Africa, in which there are, as we see it, four different groups of people who have to live and work together there in the political sense, the sort of federal system we have proposed makes it unnecessary for us to share our schools because each group will have its own school system which it will control. The schools will run themselves. We will achieve that sort of system of cooperation within that area …

By choice or by force?

One cannot achieve it by force.

You will enforce it by law.

I am coming to that point. Let me just complete what I am saying. Let us for the sake of the argument imagine that we have reached the stage where we have moved away from discrimination and rapid progress is being made in creating for all the peoples in all four groups the sort of society in which there will be no pressure exerted on people to move from one group to another. Surely that would be the ideal of every single member in this House. If one can achieve the situation where there is no pressure exerted on anybody to move from one group to another because there is no discrimination and it does not matter what group one belongs to, the legislation in question and particularly section 5 will no longer be necessary. That is the sort of situation we should like to move towards.

As regards the question whether it would be compulsory by law, let me say that each of the groups of people we see represented in the federation will automatically draw to itself its own people. There also has to be negotiation. There will, of course, always be a fringe area of people who will want to be on one side rather than another, but there will be no pressure working on them as is exemplified by the well-known phrase “try for White”. Discrimination will no longer make it so much to one’s advantage that one will do anything and dare anything to be accepted as White. If discrimination is done away with, the “try for White” element simply goes out the window. There will no longer be a need for it Coming back to the hon. the Minister’s question, it will not be necessary to have legislation to enforce that kind of classification and that kind of alignment of people with a particular group. I think that is the answer to the hon. the Minister’s question.

What we have to try to do, is to get a basis for a political stability and harmony in this plural society. The sting of classification is discrimination. That is what the problem is. It is not the classification as such. We believe that in our system, too, it will be necessary to have a classification because the whole of our political system is based on the identity group. Therefore there will have to be a system of classification in our system. However, why should it not be possible for the normal process of the registration of births to be able to cope with this? Surely, it is entirely reasonable that, when a person goes to register the birth of a child, the group to which that person belongs should be recorded.

Will you put the child’s classification on his birth certificate?

Let me explain it to the hon. the Minister: It is required that there shall be a classification of some sort.

Required by law.

He must just listen to me. He must not talk while I am trying to tell him something. He must listen to what I have to say. It is much easier that way. For our purposes it is necessary that there should be a classification, but there will be no stigma, discrimination or anything else attached to what one puts one’s child down as being. Therefore, if we say that it will be a part of the automatic system of the registration of births that the group to which the child belongs is recorded there as a natural event in the course of its life …

Will the child be satisfied with its classification 21 years later?

Why not? If there is no discrimination, why should the child not be satisfied? What conceivable reason can the hon. the Minister give me why the child should not be satisfied? I ask the hon. the Minister in his reply to give me a reason. If there is no discrimination between the groups, why should the child care 21 years later?

I can give you a reason.

I challenge the hon. the Minister to give me a reason. I am prepared to bet, Sir, that the hon. the Minister will not be able to advance a single reason, because there cannot possibly be any reason.

In order to give an edge to what I have been saying here, I move as an amendment—

Mr. Speaker, I want to come immediately to the amendment of the hon. member for Mooi River. I want to approach it by quoting from his printed policy. Under the heading “The creation of a compassionate society” the NRP refers, inter alia, to—

They couple that on the same page with certain aims and applications of principle, saying that—

I am in considerable sympathy with the feelings expressed by the hon. member for Mooi River in so far as he wants to move beyond the stage where we have been and still are to where we ought to be. However, with real respect, I want to say that, when he distinguishes between an “apartheid” society on the one hand and an open society as proposed by this party on the other hand, and then suggests that there is a middle way, once again he is really and truly found to be sitting on the fence.

It is not a middle way; it is another way. [Interjections.]

For you it has got to be either Black domination or White domination.

I duly stand corrected by the hon. leader of that party and I shall say that it is not a middle way, but another way. The fact of the matter is that in his own example he shows the futility of this other way. I want to explain that. In reply to the hon. member for Barberton he has suggested that in the so-called White South Africa—I stress “so-called”—there would be four separate school systems for the different groups, that there would be no necessity for any sharing of those schools and that there would have to be some form of classification, which would be done by way of registration at birth. By way of interjection the hon. the Minister has already made the point that, if one follows that line, the question arises of what will happen to the child of parents who decide that they are in one particular group but want to let their child attend another school. Does one give the child permission to do so?

If the community accepts it.

How on earth does one decide how a community is going to accept it? There has to be classification and registration. The community can say that they do not want Coloureds attending their schools. That is the continuation of discrimination.

Would you force them to accept it?

I am not arguing a point at the moment; I am trying to respond as honestly as I know how to points made. I believe that this is a very real dilemma. If one is going to opt for that system, one is really not going to resolve the conflict, but only add to it.

The alternative has already been spelt out by the hon. member for Rondebosch—and I am sorry that in this whole debate so little reference has been made to it—namely that the emphasis must fall on voluntary association. It seems to me that what we have had from hon. members on that side of the House has been a reiteration of their fear of loss of identity, so much so that they have to entrench their identity by having classification. They seem to get no confidence from the fact that they are part of a history, a community and a group. Perhaps the most distressing speech of all was that made by the hon. member for Durbanville who first of all spent a lot of his time on certain technical points, which was a waste of time. Then he moved on to what I can only describe as an attitude of utter racism in the very questions he put I am very glad the hon. the Deputy Minister of Plural Relations is here because I want him to know that he has now found an arch-disciple who will stand right alongside him when he says in the Transvaal and in this House that petty apartheid must stay in order to protect “groot apartheid”.

He thinks for himself.

That hon. Deputy Minister should be comforted by that At last we have found a real, true Treumichtite, if I might call him that He really has an arch-disciple there. This discovery is a great tragedy for this House.

Why do you not speak to the subject?

I am speaking to the subject and replying to the debate. If that hon. member does not like it, he can always leave.

The other point that I want to make concerns the hon. member for Pretoria West—and I shall really be very brief because he said very little indeed. In his emphasis of and the stress he placed on ethnicity, I want to remind him of the following saying by Dr. Motlana of Soweto—

That is the philosophy of that hon. member and of the Government When it suits them, ethnicity is very, very important, but when it does not, it falls by the way. I would say that if the hon. the Minister wants to persist with this particular piece of legislation, he must be consistent. He must also say that the time has come when there must be sufficient definition in the Act to be able to distinguish between the Afrikaner and the English-speaking South African as well.

And the other Whites.

And the other Whites, if you like. Then one has to be even more specific, one has to be very specific, because one can go right to the absurd limit of reminding oneself that according to scientific investigation nearly 7% of Whites possess so-called “Coloured blood”. So I suppose there should be a separate group for them as well. I wonder where all of us would then find ourselves. Then we are told that the so-called Coloured group is one-third White, so I suppose we should have another section for them as well. What I am arguing for is that one should be consistent if there is going to be this classification and that one should take it to its logical conclusion. Then one would have the policy of the hon. the Deputy Minister spelt out in bold letters for all to see.

I want to suggest to the House that when we come to look at the legislation which we say should be repealed—and I think all the hon. members on this side of the House have referred to this aspect—it has a cruel history. It is a history of court cases; it is a history of suicide; it is a history of people leaving the country of their birth and going elsewhere to live …

And returning in some cases.

The hon. the Minister may know of some such cases, but I want to tell him that there are far more who have left and will never return until such time as this motion is accepted by this House. There have been instances only recently. We have seen people moving to South West Africa, we have seen them moving to America, to Canada and to Australia. Why, in the name of heaven, should people who were born here be forced to leave because of legislation which discriminates against them? This is a cruel piece of legislation. That is the only way one can describe it. It has been described as a nightmare, and certainly there are people who are directly affected by it who have lived through, and in many cases are still living in a nightmare. The hon. member for Rondebosch has already indicated that he could quote many cases here, but only quoted one. I, too, and many others on this side of the House, I am sure, have been approached on this matter, particularly by young people. It was very interesting to hear the hon. the Minister say: “Will they be satisfied with their registration when they turn 21?” All of us, including that hon. the Minister, know of the heartbreak cases, but they are very often dismissed as being a small minority of cases; they are dismissed with the words that it is inevitable that, if one wants to have law, order, and orderliness in a country, somebody has to suffer. Have members not noticed, however, that it is always the so-called Coloured, Black or Indian who has to do the majority of the suffering in this country as a result of legislation which they have never ever accepted and in which they had no part whatsoever. This is a cruel piece of legislation and that is why we say that it should be struck from the Statute Book

It could be argued that section 5 is not truly the legal basis of the Group Areas Act and the many other Acts that my hon. colleague mentioned in his opening speech. This could be defended on a legalistic basis, but I would suggest that the answer is that the man who is under any Act discriminated against, without him having any say in his classification, does not find comfort in the fact that injustice originates from some other section than section 5. What we are trying to say is that section 5 is symptomatic of all classification procedures provided for in law. That is in my submission what the hon. the Minister has to reply to.

In the second place I want to suggest that this is not only a cruel piece of legislation, but also that it is a divisive piece of legislation. It actually divides communities and groups, and also enforces that division which seems to suggest that the groups are not really true, but are groups that have to be reinforced and structured by legislation, for if those groups existed truly, this legislation would not have been necessary at all. What we are doing in this country and have been doing over the years, is to divide the nation. The unity which we once enjoyed, or which we should certainly be striving for, is no longer present. That is why the greatest danger to the South African nation comes from within. This is a divisive piece of legislation. Not only does it divide communities and peoples within the country so that they begin to stand against each other, but it also divides families. It cuts families in half so that half the children are regarded as belonging to one race group and the other half to another. I say that there ought to be no tampering around with this legislation: It should be repealed; it does not deserve to be on the Statute Book of any civilized country. I certainly believe, as we have tried to argue, that this piece of legislation is totally unnecessary. We do live in a plural society and no one argues that point, but we believe that the only way in which we can get onto the other road is by voluntary association. Groups that want to be groups will then remain as those groups while groups that wish to find another, wider identity, will be able to do so.

That is a dream.

If it is a dream, I want to refer back to the argument advanced by the hon. member for Rondebosch in reply to the argument used by the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The hon. member for Rondebosch said that, while it was said that the Xhosa would never vote for the Zulu, yet, when we propose the principle of voluntary association, we are told that it is “Swart Gevaar” and Black majority rule. The Government cannot have it both ways and that is what we are trying to say. They must then say: “Yes, it is true that there are groups that want to belong to one another and communities that adhere to one another,” and then let them be. It seems to me as if hon. members opposite do not really trust themselves and their proposition, and therefore have to buttress this with the law as it stands, a law which we feel ought to be repealed.

May I ask you a question?

No, I have only one minute left.

Not only is this legislation cruel, divisive and unnecessary, but it is also counterproductive. We all see what is happening in the rest of Africa and when it suits us we talk about tribalism rearing its ugly head and about the divisions which are developing to the north of us; yet, we go out of our way to encourage this, we underline and high-light it, we compel and enforce it and, in so doing, we are making a terrible bed for ourselves to lie upon in days to come. It is counterproductive and it does not help the South African situation or resolve conflicts, but only seeks to enshrine it.

Recently there was a television programme on the British TV which told the story of Sandra Laing. We have not seen the programme here and it is unlikely that we shall ever see it. The case of Sandra Laing has come back to haunt us and I believe that it will continue to haunt us until we stop playing at being God, because that is what this legislation does: It seeks to displace the Creator from his rightful place, and we decide to make that which is holy, unholy. [Interjections.] I believe this is one of the worst things that any group or any person can possibly do. That is exactly what we are doing here and I believe that the only way in which to correct that, is to accept the motion before the House.

In conclusion I should like to say that the institutionalizing and enforcing of racial differences, which forms the foundation of this Government’s policy, is putting people in racial pigeon-holes, which practice can only haunt us and become a nightmare for us. I think we can say that as pigmentation in South Africa grows darker, power and privileges are diminished.

Oh, really!

The whole history of this gives rise to the real detestation of race classification by the people whom it affects most cruelly. That is why I support the motion.

Mr. Speaker, in the first place I want to thank the hon. members for Pretoria West and Durbanville for their fine contributions to the debate. I also want to thank hon. members on that side of the House for stating their points of view to me. Obviously their standpoints did not impress me, but nevertheless, I thank them for their contributions.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout has let me know that he is on the point of leaving for somewhere and for that reason I want to discuss the arguments submitted by him and by the hon. member for Rondebosch immediately. I have great respect for both hon. members and sometimes they do a great deal of research on the subject that they discuss here in the House, but unfortunately this was not one of their better occasions. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout referred to the question of no appeal to the courts. That, of course, is legally incorrect, because provision has been made for appeal to the courts in certain circumstances, and he should read section 11(6) of the Act.

It is meaningless.

In the light of the fact that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout spoke about history, I want to say to him in passing that I regret that he did not discuss that part of history concerning that period when he was a member of Sabra and believed very strongly in the promotion of a national identity.

It was not under coercion.

As far as the speech by the hon. member for Rondebosch is concerned, I want to repeat my criticism by saying that he made a fatal mistake by alleging that the Immorality Act was also based on section 5 of the Population Registration Act. The hon. member must have a look at section 16(3) and section 21(2) of the Immorality Act and there he will see that he has made a incorrect statement here.

That is a legalistic argument. [Interjections.]

Now I am being told that this is a legalistic argument. But the discussion here is about a section of an Act and why cannot one submit a legalistic argument about an Act?

The hon. members for Pinelands and for Rondebosch strongly emphasized voluntary association and if I have time towards the end—I am very sorry my time is so short—I shall return to this. I must honestly say that in reading the report of the Slabbert Commission, I can draw no other conclusion but that voluntary association means freedom for the intruder but no say to the person or group intruded upon. I shall return to that later and motivate it.

Then I want to express my sympathy to the hon. member for Mooiriver. He wants section 5 as well as classification to be abolished, but at the same time he wants to reinstate classification at a person’s birth. [Interjections.] But the hon. member said so. The hon. member for Rondebosch will not be disillusioned if I say that this side of the House will not accept his motion. For the sake of background one can take a brief look at the provisions of section 5(1) of the Population Registration Act. It stipulates that every person whose name appears on the population register shall be classified as a White, Coloured or Black person by the Secretary. Every Coloured or Black person is again classified by the Secretary according to the ethnic or other group to which he belongs and the State President can prescribe and define by proclamation the ethnic and other groups to which Coloured persons and Blacks must belong in terms of section 5(1). As far as Coloured persons are concerned, there is proclamation R.123 of 1967 which establishes seven groups for them, viz. The Cape Coloured group, the Malay group, the Griqua group, the Chinese group, file Indian group, mat group of Asians who are members of the race or class known as the Zanzibar Arabs, and the “Other Group” of Coloured persons. If the hon. member would take a look at the proclamation himself, he would see that the “Other Coloureds” is not such a stupid provision.

What is the primary purpose of the Population Registration Act? Is its purpose the sinister, oppressive and depressing aims which the hon. Opposition wants to ascribe to it so dramatically? My answer is a very definite no. The aim of section 5 of the Population Registration Act is, inter alia, aimed at enabling the various population groups to attain, retain and maintain their own group identity, …

Whether they want to or not.

… secondly, to enable the Government to protect the identity, culture and heritage of the various population groups by promoting stability and peace and quiet…

Even against their will.

Thirdly, as far as the Blacks are concerned, to promote the establishment of Black states and to grant self-government at the local management level in White areas; fourthly, to grant a very high degree of self-determination and extremely meaningful political co-responsibility to other population groups; and fifthly—and this is one of the most important reasons—to prevent domination of one population group by another in so far as is physically possible. This aspect is fundamental, for without eliminating domination of one group by another, conflict, strife and destruction await us in this part of the world.

Where this basic fact is ignored, there is trouble, even in sophisticated Western countries. If acceptance by a community is not a criterion, the individual will have a free choice of community and will be brought into a community whether he is welcome there or not. I emphasize that this is the case in so far as the policy of the PFP is concerned. To illustrate the strong feeling against intrusion, I can just quote a few examples. The Griquas and Malays have on more than one occasion requested that their particular identity be insured by way of classification. Responsible leaders among the Coloureds from time to time make strong representations to the effect that they are concerned about encroachment by other groups in their ranks. It is basic to every community to be against intrusion without its consent.

Now the question could be asked whether the division does not have the effect that some groups are being favoured more than others, which is evidenced by the fact that certain individuals are continually applying for reclassification. It is a fair question and I want to try to give an honest answer. I want to make the admission that I cannot deny the fact that an incidental effect can in fact cause favouring. But the Government’s policy and endeavour is specifically aimed at ensuring that justice will be done to all population groups, in political and material terms. What the Government has done should not be scoffed at. The Government has a proud record and enormous progress is being made on all levels. As an example I should like to mention the Government’s new constitutional plans, the hon. Prime Minister’s recent statement about parity in salaries and the proud record of the Government in respect of the provision of schools, hospitals, universities and housing to Coloured people.

However, it is futile to continue this positive work if there is no basis of peace and order. As already indicated, the population classification contributes to the creation of such peace and order in our fatherland. As a matter of fact, the refusal of the Government in many parts of the world to recognize group, ethnic and national identities contributes to much of the conflict and unrest in the world at the moment.

Allow me now to talk about the manner, the requirements and the fairness or otherwise of classification. Descent is a very strong norm and appearance also plays a major role: acceptance also plays a role. In the past acceptance played a very modest role. I admit it. But then the Erika Theron Commission made certain recommendations and I refer hon. members to the Government’s White Paper, more specifically to page 6. The recommendation was that—

The Government’s reply was as follows—

This is actually being done. Section 5(4)(c) is used to show compassion on the basis of acceptance and of humaneness. Apart from section 5(4)(c) which has been mentioned, there can still be an appeal to a classification board in all cases and in certain cases the objector also has access to the courts.

As far as section 5 of the Act is concerned, we are being called scoundrels by hon. members on the other side of the House. If that is so, are we then the only scoundrels? The Opposition has not said anything about other countries. I want to quote a fascinating little passage on what is taking place in our “beloved mother” Great Britain—the mother of democracy. I know the hon. members of the Opposition will not accept my source, but the facts are correct I quote from “External News Service Commentary” of the SABC of Friday, 16 June 1978. [Interjections.] Yes, I knew hon. members would laugh, but they must go and check the facts and tell me later whether I was wrong. I quote—

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition must tell me where I am wrong—

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not have time for answering questions. Hon. members on this side of the House did not ask questions.

Did that become law?

I quote from …

Did it become law? That is a plan.

Britain’s Race Relations Commission could certainly have laid down regulations or something with the effect of law to enforce this.

But did they?

I do not know. But certainly they must have … [Interjections.]

Order!

Hon. members are now asking: “Did this become law?” Let us turn to the great defender of democracy, the United States of America. I refer hon. members to the Allan Bakke case. The 38- year-old White American, Allan Bakke, decided that he was being discriminated against because he could not attend a specific medical school. He then laid the matter before the Supreme Court. The American Supreme Court decided that the medical school was obliged to accept him. But the court took another decision too. I quote from US News and World Report of 10 July 1978—

Of course this is law.

Is it classification?

It is not necessarily classification, but it refers to race and certainly to Negroes in this instance.

*Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate further what is being published in the United States of America. I refer you to Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1977: National data book and guide to sources. To my surprise I found a schedule on page 31 which is headed “Population by race”—and that in a raceless or classless society! This schedule contains columns providing for “White, Black and other races”. What is happening in Russia? I quote from an article which appeared in The Citizen. [Interjections.] I have a better opinion of The Citizen than of Deurbraak. [Interjections.] Hon. members may laugh about the source, but they cannot deny the facts. The article reads, inter alia—

The various race groups are mentioned in the article, which further reads—

Mr. Speaker, I have tried to point out to hon. members of the Opposition—and they have tried to laugh it off—but all over the world there is some sort of a division of races into groups, legally or otherwise. As Minister of Immigration I have personally experienced it. In Peru people are being classified at birth as Whites, etc. The hon. member for Mooi River

Did they complain about it?

… wants to do what is being done in Peru.

Finally, I come as I promised, to the policy of the PFP. I quote from page 11 of the report of the Slabbert Commission—

According to this definition a group of nudists could also constitute a group, because they have a particular common interest. I quote further—

The emphasis here is on the person who intrudes—he has the voluntary right Nothing is said here about the group that is encroached upon. My submission is that in terms of the policy of the PFP, two or three million, or even more, urban and other Blacks—to point to only one instance—could on that basis insist on joining the Whites of Houghton and making use of their schools, facilities and everything else.

Did it happen before 1950, the year when legislation in this regard was introduced for the first time?

Why do those hon. members not admit or deny it when I allege that three or four million Blacks could in terms of this undertaking join them and make use of their facilities? [Interjections.] I want to place on record that no one in the official Opposition or the other Opposition parties is prepared to answer these pertinent questions. I am not casting any reflection on any particular member in this House, but I do want to allege that the policy of the official Opposition is just as evasive—I wanted to use another word, but then I would have been called to order—as the policy in America, which has been enunciated so clearly by Professor Wade Ruth Clark, associated professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts. He was reported as follows in The Argus of 15 February 1979—

Sir, if the policy of the PFP is adopted, then when the crunch comes, the Progs of Houghton and other places will adopt exactly the same tactics which are being adopted in America.

I want to conclude by saying that our policy is an honest one. We are not shying away from it. Obviously we have the problem that the application of a policy also has negative aspects. However, in the years ahead we are going to concentrate on the positive aspects because we have section 5 as a basis for ensuring peace and order in the country and for enabling us to carry out our policy with determination and courage.

Mr. Speaker, there are only a few minutes left in which to reply. It seems to me as if the hon. members on the opposite side of the House were somewhat reluctant to participate in this debate, because few speakers participated in the debate. The first hon. member on the opposite side of the House who spoke, did not see the purpose of my motion. However, I want to refer to the argument he did advance with regard to the identification of groups. We do not deny at all that the individual does identify himself with a group. I do not know whether the hon. member really understood what he said, but what he said was that the people in this House decide on the identity of a man or a woman and to which group they may belong. But that is precisely where the root of the evil lies. On the basis of their identification of people they decide what type of political system there should be and in which direction those people may move, etc.

This brings me directly to the argument advanced by the hon. the Minister about so-called voluntary association, and intrusion. It is a total misconception to say that voluntary association implies intrusion. What has happened here?