Mr. Speaker, I move without notice—

Mr. Speaker, for nearly a year … [Interjections.]

Order!

For nearly a year now South Africa and this House have been engaged in what I believe a necessary, but nevertheless a messy and debilitating debate on what has become known as the Information scandal. During that time our attention has been distracted from the fundamental issues and from the real problems facing the people of this country. The shock waves of the Information scandal have already affected the lives and the fortunes of individuals, organizations and political parties. They have been felt by the three arms of government and have even rocked the office of the State President.

The publication of this supplementary report of the Erasmus Commission marks the end of yet another chapter of the Information scandal. However, we believe it is unlikely that the shock waves will diminish in force for some time to come. We say this with regret, because I want to make it quite clear that we would like to get the Information scandal over and done with. [Interjections.] We would like this House and the people of South Africa to redirect their attention to the fundamental issues and to the real problems facing South Africa. This particular chapter of the Information saga commenced not on 3 November 1978, when the Erasmus Commission was appointed; it commenced in a Cabinet room in Cape Town on 26 September 1978, when, according to a report, the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs challenged the then Prime Minister by saying: “My conscience will not permit me to rise from this table before my colleagues have been informed of what I was told this weekend.”

Up until that moment the Information scandal was the responsibility of Mr. Vorster, the then Prime Minister. But from that moment on all Cabinet members were affected by it, and within a day a new Government under the present hon. Prime Minister had to accept the responsibility for the handling of the legacy of corruption handed to it by the previous NP Government. [Interjections.]

Let us look for a moment at the supplementary report, and perhaps at the three reports together. First of all the commission deserves credit for having laid bare certain important features relating to the Information scandal. Cardinal amongst these is the system of financing of secret projects, which the commission itself describes “as an irregularity from a technical, constitutional and audit point of view.” Secondly, the commission has identified certain malpractices, misappropriations, and has recommended specific actions, including actions to in connection with certain individuals involved. Thirdly, the commission has given a useful overview of the whole Information operation. In some instances it has gone into matters in considerable detail, for instance into the affairs of Mr. J. van Zyl Alberts.

Some of the findings of the commission are, however, controversial, while others must, in our opinion, be questioned on the basis of the evidence available to us at this stage. Having said that, I want to point out that the commission, in the presentation of its report, has departed from the customary judicial style of expression. Phrases like “golden threads”, “spinning cocoons”, “bicycles knocked over white lines”, “black cats in dark rooms”, “lanced boils”, “cat-and-mouse games”, etc., will probably be remembered long after the import of the findings have been forgotten.

What is less satisfactory is the non-judicial and seemingly partisan way in which the commission expressed itself towards certain individuals, to say nothing of the Press and of politicians. We in these benches reject in toto the statement by the commission that the PFP in its dealings with the commission, soon after its appointment, was in any way involved in “improper, disparaging or hindering actions” in connection with this commission. [Interjections.] Other hon. members of my party will deal with that in due course.

Having looked at this report as a supplementary report to the previous two reports, much as we would have liked to say today that this is the end of the Information saga and that this report is final and conclusive, I regret that a study of the report shows that it is neither final nor conclusive. [Interjections.]

I should like now to look at three areas relevant to the work of the commission. First of all it is quite clear that the commission has not investigated all the matters which we believe should have been investigated in terms of its mandate. In paragraph 4.50 and 4.51 it says it relied heavily on the goodwill of other people to come forward with evidence and with allegations and says it would have been pointless to investigate matters that have not been drawn to the attention of the commission.

As the commission could hardly expect people who had been responsible for misappropriations or irregularities to come forward, its approach to rely on outsiders, as it calls them, to come forward to identify projects, is certainly not a valid one. Secondly, while the terms of reference referred to “alleged” irregularities, we believe that as a result of the vital disclosure at an early stage of the nature of the subterfuge which was taking place, all of the Department of Information’s secret operations should have been considered suspect and subject to investigation. That paragraph in this report does, however, do one thing which is important for us in this House to note. That is that it points to the invaluable role played by the free Press in helping the commission to expose corruption. [Interjections.] Let us make no mistake about it. Had it not been for the complementary investigative role of the free Press and, I might say, the courage of certain individual editors in publishing what they found out, the commission would not have been able to identify some of the projects which were suspect, nor would some of the persons who came forward as witnesses have known that the information they had would be helpful to the commission.

Secondly, the commission has quite clearly not investigated all the matters referred to it, all the aspects dealing with malpractices and maladministration, in sufficient depth for it to have come to final or definitive conclusions. The hon. members in these benches will be dealing with a number of the matters on which we think there have been incomplete investigations. I can only deal with four of them very briefly.

Firstly, there is the question of To The Point. In relation to this matter, there are completely conflicting statements. On the one hand Mr. Jussen states that the former Department of Information only paid for subscriptions, whilst Mr. Braam Fourie, the former department’s accountant, states that the moneys involved were for the actual operation and production of To The Point. When one is dealing with R14,l million, it is important to establish whether it was merely for subscriptions or whether, in fact, it was part and parcel of the whole operation. Let us suppose the money was for subscriptions only—for the years 1974 and 1975, allowing for a 33⅓% mark-up for the distribution costs of the magazines, it would appear that the number of copies purchased each week was 170 000! If one analyses the figures, it is quite clear that the money was not merely used for the purchasing of the magazines and that some of the money paid over must have gone into the general funding of To The Point. That is a matter that should have been investigated and not just left in the rather casual fashion indicated on page 49 of the report.

Then there is the question of the Washington Star and the amount of $10 million. On this the report is also inconclusive. It states that in the final analysis R6 350 000 has been lost. It is not known where it is. The commission, however, relied only on one witness, Mr. Les de Villiers, and despite the fact that it is said that Dr. Connie Mulder was a key witness, the commission refused to call him to give evidence. The commission said it believed he was a key witness and could have shed light on this transaction, but despite that he was not subpoenaed and required to give evidence. The same applies to Van Zyl Alberts. It should have been known to the commission that Van Zyl Alberts is a co-director, with Mr. McGoff, of the Panax company, which is, the holding company for the whole of McGoff’s newspaper and magazine empire. Yet Van Zyl Alberts was not called in. All that the commission says is that R6 350 000 has been lost and that it does not know where it is.

Thirdly, there is the question of ministerial responsibility for funds transferred to the former Department of Information from the Special Defence Account. This is a matter which was the subject of debate in this House a one which we referred to the commission, but the commission dismissed any further investigation of this, saying that it had already dealt with it. Nevertheless “it was being persistently raked up by other bodies”, it says. The commission produced the simile of the bicycles being knocked over the white line. A matter such as this, involving both ministerial and legal responsibility, cannot however, be wished away by frivolous similes or stories about bicycles being pushed over the white line. The commission identified the subterfuge, the system of deception, but remains strangely silent on whether the people responsible for the funds in those accounts were, in fact, fulfilling their legal obligations, as required in terms of section 2 and section 5 of the Defence Special Account Act So the commission merely glossed over that.

Fourthly, there is the question of the sale of The Citizen to Perskor. The commission said that it had examined the matter in detail, very carefully, and decided that it fell outside its terms of reference because this issue arose after the former Department of Information had been disbanded. There were, however, many other issues that were investigated. The Citizen was investigated up to that point.

We must make it very clear that we shall continue to press, inside and outside this House, for a further inquiry into the sale of The Citizen to Perskor, not by the Vorster Government, but by the Cabinet, the Government, of today. I say this because we believe that it was an absolute disgrace. It was, in fact, the culmination of the work started by Dr. Eschel Rhoodie and Dr. Connie Mulder some three years ago. We believe that this matter should have been investigated further, and we are going to press, as hard as we can, for further investigations to take place.

The third point relating to the commission’s findings is clearly that many of them are controversial and cannot be dealt with or evaluated until the full record of evidence is available. So one has General Van den Bergh calling the commission a farce. One has Dr. Connie Mulder disputing its findings and saying he will release further evidence. One has Mr. Vorster, who has kept a silence, although there are indications that in due course he will test and contest some of these conclusions. Some of these controversial findings will be dealt with by my colleagues in these benches.

Let me sum up. The report is interesting and in parts informative. It is certainly helpful in understanding the nature of the intrigue that took place, but it certainly also leaves very many questions unanswered in the whole Information scandal.

Clearly, the most dramatic and fundamental findings in the supplementary report of the commission deal with the former Prime Minister, Mr. B. J. Vorster. Let me say at the outset that we derived no satisfaction from seeing a man who occupied the highest offices in South Africa being humiliated in any personal way. [Interjections.] Although the findings of the commission are dramatically different from its findings on basically the same evidence in the first report, they do not change our attitude towards either the role or the responsibility of Mr. Vorster in the Information affair. Indeed, the findings in the latest report confirm our view stated in this House and stated repeatedly over the past six months. We believe that Mr. Vorster, as the then Prime Minister, had to accept overall responsibility for the Information affair; that he had to accept responsibility for the irregular and deceptive method of financing he had insisted upon should be employed; and that he has to accept the censure which flows from the fact that he concealed irregularities he knew about, from his colleagues, from Parliament and from the people of South Africa.

It has been admitted that Mr. Vorster knew about the irregularities in connection with The Citizen in August and certainly not later than in September of the year 1977. This fact completely justifies the Opposition’s view that the election of November 1977 was a phoney election on a phoney issue and that the NP won that election on the basis of a phoney mandate put to the people of South Africa. [Interjections.] In that respect this report is a complete vindication of the Opposition, but it is more than just a vindication of a political party. We in these benches believe that it is, in fact, a vindication of our parliamentary system of government. The various elements of our parliamentary system—an inquiring free Press, a determined Opposition, a probing Select Committee, an alert Auditor-General and a commission of inquiry—each playing its part, ripped away the cloak of secrecy that had been maintained at the highest level of government in South Africa. We believe that, provided we do not tamper with our parliamentary system, slowly perhaps, but inexorably, all the mysteries still lurking in the cupboard of the Information scandal will be exposed to the light of public knowledge and scrutiny.

However, when one looks back at the enormity of what took place in a country with a comparatively clean record as far as corruption is concerned, I believe we are all entitled to ask, “How could this have happened?” How could there have been established in South Africa an élite cabal, clique, a ruling hierarchy which flouted the established procedure of finance and control, which ignored the laid-down rules of administration and which disregarded the conventions of collective Cabinet responsibility? Yet this happened when men were persuaded in the name of patriotism that through secret projects operating beyond the controls and restraints laid down by Parliament they could counter the total onslaught. They persuaded themselves that through stealth and deception they could sell the unsaleable policy of apartheid to the outside world. That is what they persuaded themselves they could do. In the event, Sir, the illegitimate machine which was created misappropriated millions of rand of taxpayers’ money and, instead of meeting the onslaught from abroad, 50% of the R64 million of taxpayers’ money made available was spent inside South Africa financing a newspaper to support the NP and another 25% on financing pro-Government projects and publications inside South Africa. So at least 75% of the money was used not to counter the onslaught from outside, but on trying to support the Government on a partisan basis within South Africa. This must never, never happen again. Clearly, the laws and regulations relating to the control and auditing of funds must be tightened, the method of controlling secret funds must be revised and even more important, the good old principle of collective Cabinet responsibility must be firmly re-established. I believe that a heavy responsibility rests upon the members of the Cabinet, and I trust that, as a result of the traumatic experiences of the past few months, they too would have learnt.

Tell us something new.

No Prime Minister must ever again be allowed to attain such a position of power and authority in which Mr. Vorster found himself in relation to the other members of his Cabinet. No Minister must be allowed to undertake secret projects without reporting to his colleagues on the projects or the success thereof. No Minister must allow himself to be pressurized into irregular budgeting and financial procedures without so much as informing his other Cabinet colleagues.

What happened before 28 September 1978 was the responsibility of Mr. Vorster’s Cabinet of whom there are still many members present. What has happened since then is the responsibility of the present Cabinet. The hon. the Prime Minister on the steps of the Senate committed his Administration to the attainment of clean administration. We accepted this as his objectives, as it should be the objectives of any Government in South Africa. We have noted some of the administrative and legislative steps which have been taken.

But having said that I want to say that the unhappy and disruptive chain of events in the past seven months is to a considerable extent the consequence of the way in which this Government has handled the whole affair. It has now been established, in final and unambiguous terms, that the Cabinet was told by Mr. Vorster of The Citizen and other irregularities as early as 26 September last year. This has only finally been stated by the hon. the Prime Minister last Monday, when he made a statement to the House. We believe that whatever the consequence might have been for the NP, the hon. the Prime Minister on taking office should have immediately taken the public into his confidence on this issue. He should have immediately told the people of South Africa that the Government has inherited serious irregularities, including The Citizen. This did not, however, take place, and because the hon. the Prime Minister failed to take that single decisive step, he set in motion a chain of suspicion, a rumour and tension in South Africa such as we have not seen for many years.

On the basis that the Cabinet Ministers did know, there are a few points which are inexplicable. For instance, how did the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Plural Relations and Development come to nominate Dr. Connie Mulder for the position of Prime Minister? In the light of what we now know, how did the ruling NP come to nominate Mr. Vorster for the office of State President? How could this have happened? Why did we have to sit through the whole month of October while the Government knew about The Citizen and the corruption but did not tell the people of South Africa what had taken place? Why was there this fierce attack on Judge Mostert when he released evidence? The Government said the evidence was one-sided, while they knew all the time that it was substantially correct. They had heard it themselves.

So one can go on and on. When this House met on 7 and 8 December of last year, why did the hon. the Prime Minister not then tell us that the Cabinet had been informed?

What does the commission say about your party’s conduct? They say you are a bunch of cowards.

Why did the hon. the Prime Minister not tell us that he was told by Mr. Vorster of this deception? But he said nothing—“tjoepstil!” When the House met again on 2 February this year, the hon. the Prime Minister in the no-confidence debate again failed to tell the House and the people of South Africa what Mr. Vorster had told him and his colleagues on 26 September 1978. It was only after other people exposed the front organizations, e.g. the $10 million and the funding of To The Point, that the hon. the Prime Minister and the Government reluctantly admitted that this had been happening all along. In due course it was inevitable, as a result of the Government’s handling of this matter, that Mr. Vorster himself would become directly involved. To the dismay of South Africans we had the unedifying spectacle of a State President and a former Cabinet Minister making public attacks on each other’s integrity. We read in the Press only last week of another embarrassing situation of the hon. the Prime Minister confronting the former State President and this resulting in his early resignation.

I say that is a deliberate lie, and if you repeat it, you will be a liar.

It is all very well for the hon. the Prime Minister to say that. He has not denied it to date. [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether Mr. Vorster requested that there should be a judicial commission.

Mr. Vorster told me, long before the report was issued, that he was going to resign.

Did Mr. Vorster request a judicial commission? [Interjections.]

Order!

Did Mr. Vorster request a special Select Committee?

I say that whoever says that, is a liar.

Did Mr. Vorster ask that his resignation should stand over to the end of July?

No.

I have asked three simple questions. The hon. the Prime Minister says that they are all inaccurate. Well, none of us was present there …

I say that if you repeat it, you will be a liar.

There is no point in him going on like this. The hon. the Prime Minister must bear in mind that he is now not on a soap-box. This is not political hustings; this is the Parliament of South Africa. I am surprised that the hon. the Prime Minister did not deny these matters straight away.

Rather telephone McHenry.

Do not become childish.

Order!

In the final instance the question of collective responsibility remains. It is also mentioned in the report. I want to put it to the hon. the Prime Minister: Can the members of Mr. Vorster’s Cabinet any longer escape collective Cabinet responsibility …

All you can do is gossip.

Do not get so nervous.

Order!

Previously they said that they could escape from it because Dr. Connie Mulder did not tell them. But the then Prime Minister himself knew and in addition the then hon. Minister of Defence and the hon. the Minister of Finance were aware that money was being channelled irregularly from the Special Defence Account to the Department of Information. How many more Cabinet Ministers must know what is going on before the Cabinet is prepared to accept collective responsibility? We say that if the concept of collective Cabinet responsibility has any meaning, the NP Government as a whole must accept responsibility for this damaging and disruptive debacle.

When we first debated this matter in December, we called upon the Government to resign. The Government has ignored our call so far. Let me say to the Government that the odium of the Information scandal will stay with them until the Government and the NP accept responsibility for what took place and go to the country for a clean mandate for clean government. [Interjections.]

Order!

We believe that we shall only get rid of this issue once the Government obtains a clean mandate.

I shall go to the country in my own time.

Only when it has a clean mandate for a clean administration will South Africa be able to turn its back on this dismal, murky chapter in the history of South Africa and will this Parliament and the people of South Africa be able to get on with the task of planning ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to begin by publicly expressing the Government’s thanks and appreciation towards the members of the Erasmus Commission and the staff that assisted them for their dedicated work We know that they worked under difficult circumstances and under great pressure, and we know that their work was complicated by forces in this country that are not prepared to accept the authority of a judicial commission, people who have so little respect for our legal system that for the sake of political gain they did everything in their power to obstruct the work of this commission. Because the commissioners had to work under such difficult circumstances, we want to thank them for their sacrifice.

We have just listened to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. His speech was so predictable that I was able to proceed almost at once to deliver my prepared speech. We anticipated everyone of the arguments he advanced, and we were able to do so because his speech corresponded exactly to the guidelines laid down by the Opposition Press. As usual, the protégé did what his master, the Opposition Press, had dictated to him. The chief insinuation he made in his speech was that the Government was not making an effective attempt finally to resolve the Information situation, that the Government was drawing back and was still reluctant I do not want to bore hon. members by referring to all the steps we have already taken. Hon. members know the whole history from the Pretorius Committee and they know what has been done under the leadership of the hon. the Prime Minister since he took over the reins. They know what has been done step by step.

Do you accept the findings of the commission? [Interjections.]

The hon. member asks whether we accept the findings of the commission. I shall come to that presently. I anticipated that question too. Since the appointment of the Pretorius Committee …

[Inaudible.]

Order! The question asked by the hon. member for Yeoville has been answered and he must now stop referring to it.

… the Government has endeavoured to find solutions to the problems, it has endeavoured to divulge the facts and to resolve the matter in the interests of South Africa. That is why we are debating this matter again today. We are now discussing the third report of a judicial commission of inquiry. Does the hon. the Leader of the Opposition want us to anticipate everything? Does he want us to appoint a commission and then, while the commission is still investigating the matter, to take precipitate action in respect of certain aspects? No, we have acted in an orderly manner because we believe in orderly government, something which the official Opposition does not want in South Africa.

The hon. member for Yeoville has insinuated by way of interjection that we are uncertain about this report. The newspapers of the Opposition Press are full of this. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, too, has insinuated again that we are reluctant, that we do not really want to take decisive action in respect of these matters. But surely this is not true. When we analyse this report, we see that it refers to two crucial matters, concerning which the hon. the Prime Minister spelt out the Government’s standpoint clearly and unequivocally as far back as Monday, 4 June 1979. Regarding the former State President, Mr. Vorster, about whom no recommendation was made, the Government has adopted a definite and unequivocal standpoint by paying tribute to him and his wife for their dedicated, honourable and disinterested service and by putting his honour and integrity beyond all doubt. We have said that on 26 September 1978, he disclosed to the Cabinet the facts which were known and available at that time. We have said that he had to clean up, under difficult circumstances, the mess made by others in the former Department of Information. I want to emphasize that.

Secondly, a clear standpoint has been adopted concerning the second crucial matter in the report, i.e. a recommendation in respect of the evidence that was heard. The Government has said that it will be made available after having been evaluated by a Select Committee. Surely this is a clear and unequivocal standpoint which has been adopted.

The rest of the commission’s recommendations are of a more administrative nature and less urgent. The Prime Minister has already said that they are receiving the positive attention of the Government. Surely positive attention is much more than just taking cognizance. If words have any meaning, surely positive attention clearly means that recommendation 3 of page 58, for example, will be examined by the proper Government institution. Hon. members may take it from me that this will be done. Similarly, the introduction of the State Trust Board Bill clearly supports recommendation 5, page 58, by creating a channel for giving effect to it. The same applies to recommendation 4. Furthermore, as regards aspects such as the R6 million and the other aspects mentioned by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, all these matters are in the hands of the police. They will investigate them. As far as Rhoodie is concerned, the State has already taken the necessary steps to have him extradited. So there are no grounds for saying that the Government has not adopted a standpoint and taken active steps in respect of this report as well. Then there is the added dimension that to ensure proper perspective, a final standpoint can only be adopted, a standpoint can only be finally formulated, when the evidence has been read in conjunction with all three reports. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said this on 7 December, and now he has lectured us about it again. I reject the allegation that the standpoint of the Government, as stated by the hon. the Prime Minister on 4 June, should be more detailed or does not go far enough. At this stage, the standpoint that has been announced is balanced and sensible.

Secondly, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the Sunday Times on Sunday have made a great fuss about Mr. Vorster’s retirement. Inferences and insinuations about this are rife. We have just heard them again from the Opposition. On Sunday, the Sunday Times screamed: “P. W. Botha forced Vorster out,” adding in bold print, “The Prime Minister, Mr. P. W. Botha, this week forced an unwilling Mr. John Vorster to resign as State President.”

Did he ask for an inquiry by a committee of Parliament? [Interjections.] It is a simple question.

I should like to make it clear, as calmly and responsibly as I possibly can, that that allegation is devoid of all truth. It is an untrue statement which casts a reflection on the memory of Mr. Vorster and which is absolutely unfair towards the present hon. Prime Minister, because it charges him with having done something which is the exact reverse of the truth. That is why I want to correct it. We are not prepared to allow Mr. Vorster, who led South Africa in an outstanding way for 12 years, to be slandered with lies. Nor are we prepared to allow the present hon. Prime Minister to remain the target of unjust and unfounded attacks. We have had enough of character assassination and of diabolical suspicion-mongering against honourable, upright leaders such as Mr. Vorster and Mr. P. W. Botha. [Interjections.] What is the truth? I shall tell hon. members. Hon. members must please listen to me. Mr. Vorster’s decision to resign was taken of this own free will. He took the initiative.

And his statement?

In fact, during the talks which preceded the announcement of 4 June, he referred to the fact that even before the contents of the supplementary Erasmus report were known to anyone, he had informed the hon. the Prime Minister of his intention to resign.

When was that?

The hon. the Prime Minister has confirmed that. He also told us that the hon. the Prime Minister had requested him to stay on and that he had complied with the request. As usual, he agreed to stay on if it were deemed in the interests of South Africa. What is more, I also want to say that on Tuesday afternoon, 8 May, Mr. Vorster told me in a personal and confidential conversation of his decision to resign—a decision which he had already taken at that stage. In saying this, I am not guilty of a breach of faith, for I have his permission to disclose this. Furthermore, I want to state that the spirit in which the discussions which preceded his resignation— as announced on 4 June—were conducted, also testified to the statemanship of both leaders and to their loyalty to the best interests of South Africa. For this reason, I reject as a barefaced and malicious untruth the insinuation that an unwilling Mr. Vorster was forced out of the office of State President by the hon. the Prime Minister. This is what we have to put up with in South Africa today. More than a million people …

Are you prepared to tell the House what the State President gave as his reason to you for wanting to resign?

I am not furnishing a report here; I am repudiating lies, and I do not intend to be led astray by such questions. I am not standing in the witness-box. I am telling the truth, and hon. members on that side of the House would do well to listen to it.

Order! It has no direct bearing on the report in any event.

Almost 2 million readers of the Sunday Times were exposed to this untrue statement, based on stories from an anonymous source. The only conclusion to which I can come is that that anonymous source maliciously wanted to create the impression that Mr. Vorster had been forced out, or that this is a malicious inference drawn by the Sunday Times from whatever information they had available to them.

Once again, there have been indirect as well as direct allegations and insinuations by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition with regard to the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Finance. The Opposition’s reaction in this connection is so predictable that two speakers on this side of the House have been assigned the task of replying to that specifically and in full. I shall only say that we reject those allegations and insinuations. There is only one person with first-hand knowledge who insinuates what they insinuate, and that is Dr. Mulder.

This forces me to say something which should have been said long ago, and that is that Dr. Mulder had the opportunity on more than one occasion before he left the Cabinet, and more specifically at the last Cabinet meeting under Mr. Vorster and at the meeting where the present Prime Minister asked him to reconsider his position, to identify any other member of the Cabinet who might have been involved. In my opinion, this would have been the most natural thing in the world to do, especially when the man who is asking you to leave is in your opinion an accomplice. The fact is that he did not do so then, but only started saying so several months later.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition also referred to collective Cabinet responsibility. Other hon. members on this side of the House will deal with this in greater detail. I just want to repeat that experts on constitutional law and other authorities make it quite clear that collective Cabinet responsibility refers to matters of which the whole Cabinet was informed, or where, if a member of the Cabinet was absent, he was previously informed that it would be discussed.

So you knew since September of last year.

So there cannot be any question of collective responsibility of the Cabinet with regard to matters of which it had not been informed.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition also tried to project an image of a loyal PFP … [Interjections.] … a party which is anxious to conclude this dark chapter in our history. But then he went on to prove that he did not really mean this. While the NP does not flinch from its responsibility of removing the entire boil—that is what the former Department of Information has become—we must also recognize that the Opposition parties, too, have a responsibility in this connection, and I should like to say something now about their role in this matter. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Durban Point and other speakers have repeatedly emphasized what an important role they have to play in this connection. The hon. member for Yeoville is always wanting to serve on commissions and to help govern the country … [Interjections.]

Not any more.

They pose as the great saviours of South Africa in this matter. But let us examine the role which the PFP and the NRP have played up to now. Then it becomes clear that the Opposition’s conduct has in itself become an abscess from which the pus of opportunism and political expediency is freely flowing. [Interjections.] What has their pattern been? They have identified target figures and have then relentlessly attacked, persecuted, pestered and tried to expose them. This in itself is not wrong. In fact, one could say it is part of politics, even that it is the duty of the Opposition to do it. However, their opportunism and political expediency are apparent…

Do you remember how you defended Connie?

Harry, you are a political murderer.

… firstly, from their method of going all out…

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: May the hon. member refer to the hon. member for Yeoville as a political murderer?

I shall consider the point of order. Meanwhile, the hon. the Minister may proceed.

… for the most vulnerable man, and that was Dr. Mulder. Nothing he said or did was right. He was made out to be the greatest liar by Opposition speakers. However, the moment he was eliminated, he became their hero. Since then, his credibility has been beyond any doubt, and they say that every scrap of evidence he produces about other leaders of the NP is the truth and nothing but the truth. They pretended to pity him because he had been turned into the scapegoat for the faults of others, or so they said. The hon. member for Pinelands played a leading role in that process. Now that Mr. Vorster has retired, I want to predict that they will henceforth begin to sing his praises, and the hon. member for Yeoville will be the first to do so. [Interjections.] That is the way we have come to know him. [Interjections.] The man they want to destroy, the man in respect of whom they drew up a petition, the man for whom we have the greatest esteem and affection in the NP, this man they will now try to use to get at the hon. the Prime Minister.

Secondly, it has been their method to pretend that they possess shocking information and that the NP is trying to cover it up. In the words of Mr. Justice Erasmus, this ran through every speech “like a golden thread”. Listening to the hon. member for Yeoville, we would have said that he had abundant facts concerning irregularities in the former department in his possession. However, after they had been consistently confronted with and could no longer escape the challenge of giving evidence before the Erasmus Commission, they were exposed for what they were: a lot of political opportunities. Their so-called evidence consisted of, and I quote (page 52)—

It is pathetic. There are no real facts, no facts and no direct knowledge. Whom do they use? Do they use the hon. member for Yeoville, who tries to pose as the great patriot who knows the truth and who fights for the truth?

He was afraid that he would commit perjury.

No, they use an official of their party and they tell him that he must suffer the humiliation …

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Is it permissible for the hon. the Minister to say that the hon. member for Yeoville would have committed perjury?

Mr. Speaker, I said he was afraid to appear because he feared that he might commit perjury. The hon. member was afraid that he might commit perjury. I stand by that statement. That is the only reasonable explanation for the fact that that cowardly hon. member did not give evidence.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I ask you whether the irresistible inference to be drawn from that remark… [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr. Speaker, I ask your ruling on this question. Is the only possible inference to be drawn from that remark not that the hon. member in fact contemplated perjury? [Interjections.]

Order! I want to put it to the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs that I do not care for that expression.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it. The fact remains, however, that the hon. member is a coward.

Order! The hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs is not allowed to say that the hon. member is a coward. He must withdraw it.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it unconditionally. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and of Sport and Recreation may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, I think I shall say what the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs really wanted to say. We think the hon. member for Yeoville was afraid to give evidence. [Interjections.] So they sent an official of their party to suffer the humiliation of the pricked balloon of so-called PFP knowledge. It is a tragedy that South Africa should have such an official Opposition inflicted upon it.

In spite of what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition says, we have come almost to the end of a long and protracted episode, a painful and unpleasant interlude in a long history of clean and effective government. [Interjections.] Of course there are some outstanding matters. The first outstanding matter to which attention will have to be given before we can really get on with effective government is throwing the hon. member for Bryanston out of this House, [Interjections.] I say that there are quite a number of outstanding matters. There are court cases in the offing. Inquiries are also continuing into certain aspects arising from the findings that were made, etc.

There are quite a lot of things that have to be cleared up, and there are some unresolved matters that have to be dealt with. Basically, however, it is over. Henceforth discussions will increasingly take the form of reflection. The facts are known. The evidence will follow in due course. The promise made by the Government to expose matters has been kept or is in the process of being kept, and the nation has responded to that. The Opposition cannot deny, after all, that it exploited the Information issue up to the hilt at Swellendam, Beaufort West and Randfontein. [Interjections.] What were the results? For the PFP, the results were absolute humiliation and rejection. For the NRP, the results were stagnation and the consolidation that at least they had not come last. [Interjections.] Under these circumstances, it is not unreasonable to suggest that everyone should now give an account of the course he will take in the future.

[Inaudible.]

Does the hon. member for Hillbrow want to ask a question?

No, he is just being noisy. [Interjections.]

I now give the hon. member for Hillbrow the opportunity to ask a question, and if he has nothing to say, he should please keep quiet. [Interjections.]

Under these circumstances, it is not unreasonable to suggest that everyone should now give an account of the course he will follow in the future. Those of us in this House, the public outside, the Press, and the other media all have to give an account of this. The NP has decided about the course it will follow and we are determined to devote ourselves with dedication and real earnest to the urgent problems of our country and of its people. We are determined to create a spirit of co-operation within which those problems can be solved. The hon. the Prime Minister has already begun to do so. In a dynamic way, he has taken a new initiative in respect of crucial problems and he has brought new hope and new light. We in the NP want to tell him publicly today, in front of those who denigrate him and who are not prepared to acquiesce in the findings of the three reports, that he must go on. If the Opposition parties, the PFP and the NRP, want to get bogged down in the Information Affair, we shall leave them behind and the NP will forge ahead on its own. We want to tell the hon. the Prime Minister that what the country expects of him is to grasp the reins firmly, to give a firm lead and to ignore the irrelevant squabbling we hear about the Information affair from now on. The Information affair is over, and the public thinks so too.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister contributed very little in the way of promoting his case. I should have expected much more from him. His defensive speech missed the essential points, but I want to come back to those points.

In the first place I come to the hon. the Minister’s refusal to reply to a straightforward question. He was asked whether the Government accepted the findings in the supplementary report of the Erasmus Commission, but what the hon. the Minister did, was to refer to a few of the recommendations and not to the findings in the report. We shall keep on asking whether the Government accepts the findings as well as the recommendations.

What are the recommendations based on?

My time is limited and I do not intend going into the details of the last of the three reports which have rocked the nation, which have toppled trusted leaders who were the heroes of hon. members on that side and their followers. It is amazing, however, how quickly a hero ceases being a hero once he has been toppled.

I see no purpose in just stirring up old mud merely with the object of generating new smells. I want to try looking beyond the oft-stated, oft-repeated and much published arguments that have been used about this scandal, to the deeper significance for South Africa, the deeper implications for our country and for the Government itself. I also want to look at the implications of the reaction of the Government which, in certain instances, are as dangerous to the country’s future as the scandal itself has been.

It started with the courage of a judge whom the hon. the Prime Minister relieved of his commission and it led to a second commission. I want to place on record that it was aided, in terms of the evidence contained in the report, by intensive investigative journalism. If one reads page 11, paragraph 4.2—I do not want to waste time reading it— one finds there acceptance of the fact that the commission sought the truth through bits of rumour, through odd words, through odd repudiations and through Press reports. Therefore investigative journalism became one of the elements which made this possible.

The NRP rejected the political findings of the first report, the findings concerned with political responsibility. Of course, we have been proved right by the final report. I admire the courage of the Erasmus Commission, and whilst I am referring to it, let me associate myself with the hon. the Minister in expressing my appreciation for the hard work done by the commission in the limited time available and under very great pressure. I appreciate its courage in reversing its initial findings and reaching the final findings in this report.

At this stage I also want to go on record as saying that I personally respected the former Prime Minister and State President as a tough opponent. I respected him as a tough political opponent and as a person who believed in his own cause, although I differed entirely from him as far as the cause itself was concerned and the methods employed by him. I cannot condone what he has done and what has been revealed to have been done in this final report. He has, however, paid the price, and I shall certainly let him go in peace because I do not believe that one lacks a man when he is down. I believe that this report has brought to an end that particular aspect of the situation, but there are two other aspects to which I want to refer before I come to the other issues.

Firstly, I want to ask the hon. the Minister of the Interior to give an assurance—and I hope the hon. the Minister will be able to give it now—that those who were named in the report as having been the unjust victims of this affair, and who suffered injustice and financial loss, will be adequately and fully compensated for that loss and that there will be no haggling or quibbling about that. I am of course referring to Mr. Waldeck and others.

I have already given an answer to a written question on that, so go and do your homework.

My question goes beyond that answer. My question is whether there will be compensation without any quibbling about it.

I have given you a reply. Go and look up the answer.

Let me say that I have a petition from one of those people, and unless I can get an assurance or undertaking I shall seek to present that petition to Parliament, because I believe that the sincerity of the Government will be tested by how it treats the victims of this affair. [Interjections.]

The second aspect I want to deal with is the Government’s responsibility as a Government, a responsibility that cannot be wiped out by sacrificing individuals. The final report leaves the finding of the interim report unchanged. It is stated that no further evidence was found to change the interim report finding on the responsibility of the Government as a whole. That report was a finding of “unproven”. I say “unproven” because the evidence was not there.

What nonsense.

I believe that in the face of the public challenge, which the hon. the Minister referred to, there is one more step to be taken in regard to this commission—and I ask the hon. the Prime Minister to take that step—and that is to recall the commission to do one more thing, namely to test Dr. Connie Mulder’s challenge about giving further evidence. I ask that the commission be called together to test that challenge. Subpoena him, accept his offer to give evidence and let us see what the truth is. Let the commission also be recalled to accept evidence offered by the hon. Senator Crook who sought to make a late submission. Then we can clear, once and for all, this nagging suspicion, doubt and questioning which will otherwise continue to ripple throughout the country and also beyond South Africa.

Apart therefrom, this is, sadly, not the end of the affair, as has already been stated by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. We have a State Trust Board, now approved by Parliament, to liquidate the mess. I believe that that was the right way to deal with this matter. We have a Bill before Parliament—and I welcome it—to now make it possible, as we demanded last December, for the Auditor-General to audit all funds, secret funds included, fully and without restriction. Those are two positive actions which have been taken. We have a Select Committee to consider the evidence. That, too, is part of what is still to come. We have the prosecutions which will follow and which again will lead to further knowledge, discussion and debate on this issue. We have, furthermore, the unanswered questions which, as the commission itself says, remain unanswered because of lack of evidence.

Perhaps, Sir, this was the bell for the last lap, but it is certainly not the finishing line; it is also a warning bell for South Africa. I agree with the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications that we have had enough post mortems, because a post mortem which does not establish the cause of death is futile. I believe that what we must look at is the causes of this whole Information scandal and the lessons which should be learnt from them.

This may sound surprising, but I believe it is in a way fortunate that the Information scandal occurred when it did, that it occurred at a time when South Africa is in a state of cold crisis, in a cold war. Imagine if it had not been exposed at this time. Imagine if this had broken in, say, five years’ time and South Africa was in a state of hot crisis. Imagine what the effect would be then of the paralysis of government which has marked this exposure. I believe it would have had tragic and dangerous, if not fatal, consequences for South Africa. Painful as the surgery may be, I believe that at this stage the patient, South Africa, can still survive. The patient can, however, only survive if in fact we have learnt the lessons from this whole sordid affair.

Those lessons I want to post as the following. The first is the role of parliamentary opposition, its responsibility in regard to good government and clean government—its responsibility towards the people of South Africa. This includes the role the Opposition in Parliament must play as a cleansing and regenerative agent, that is to say, as an agent that must cleanse the mess and try to regenerate confidence in the system of which we are a part in our free society. The intolerance of the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and the intolerance of the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs towards opposition, if it continues, will show …

What intolerance?

… that we have not learnt the prime lessons that, whether they perform it well or badly and whether one likes it or not, the Opposition has a role to play in a free society. Intolerance of that role is a rejection of the free society itself.

The next lesson concerns the role of the free Press, however sensational and even irresponsible it may be. I speak as a neutral who has been the target of both sides. However partisan the media may be, they have played in this whole affair a vital role, equally essential to a free society. I say that, without the Press having fulfilled that role, I doubt very strongly whether we would ever have had a full exposure of the facts. It was simply their reporting that brought to light witnesses and information which would not have been brought to light by some secret inquiry which was unknown to the people concerned.

The third lesson concerns the desperate danger to South Africa and our free society of effective power moving from Parliament to the executive. For years now, power has been moving from Parliament, from hon. members who are not privy to the inner workings of the Treasury, to the executive. In this process we have found more and more powers being granted to Ministers and more government by regulation. Parliament, via the NP caucus, has become a rubber stamp of the executive.

This has been one of the consequences of the essential power structure of the NP, which relies on blind loyalty, irrespective of whether it is deserved or what that loyalty is hiding. [Interjections.] The Government reaction to this affair is one of blind loyalty, irrespective of whether the Government has deserved it or not. If one adds to that, secrecy, one has the recipe for government by a power clique, by an elite so small that even the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for controlling public money, did not know what they were doing with it, where that money was going and what was happening to it afterwards. That is the danger of an elite power clique in which even the Deputy Prime Minister at the time and the Minister of Finance claim that they had no knowledge of what was happening.

The ultimate disservice to South Africa is the danger of losing the ideological battle, the final battle between the democratic system and Marxist totalitarianism. By undermining and weakening the superiority of our system, and the faith in its superiority, we are aiding and abetting the only alternative to our democratic system, viz. that of totalitarianism and Marxism. If the masses cannot have confidence in our system and identify with it, and if the control of our system moves into a few hands, the people as a whole will lose confidence, as I believe they have lost confidence in the government as a result of this affair. If our value system is to survive, we must restore open administration under the constant searchlight of public and Press scrutiny. The lesson to be learned by the electorate lies in the danger of a virtual one-party State. The lesson of Africa, the lesson of tribal power which lead to the formation of one-party States, is a lesson our electorate has to learn so that the people can call a halt to the transfer of power into fewer and fewer hands. [Interjections.] Our system has been on trial, but I believe that it will survive. Our task now is to rebuild the image of South Africa, to rebuild faith in our standards and in our value system. We must clean this whole scandal out of our national bloodstream at every level. That means cleaning out of the system, in turn, blind loyalties to things because they are party-orientated and not because they are right.

You are wrong.

No, I am not wrong. That interjection is a perfect example of blind loyalty. The time has come to look at what is right and to get rid of the sickness which has brought a Government to a state of paralysis and has harmed South Africa. Therefore, although I cannot agree with all the findings of this report, I do believe that it has made a contribution towards setting South Africa back on the road which we should follow as a free and democratic society.

Mr. Speaker, I do not differ at all with the hon. member for Durban Point’s concluding sentence in regard to the report I have known the hon. member for a long time. I want to tell him that if he even hopes one day to be the Leader of the Opposition, or aspires to be the Prime Minister, he should stop trying to outdo the hon. Leader of the Opposition by his extremities and his criticism. He uses clichés such as “power cliques”, “power groups”, “one-party States”, “system on trial”, and “blind loyalty”. He blows out all those phrases because he can say nothing that is in any way constructive. I know why the hon. member for Durban Point has spoken as he has spoken today. He and his colleagues sit there today with a guilty conscience because they were party—and the records reveal it—in the previous debate to all the wild accusations and criticisms that were levelled at the former State President.

All of which were proved to be true.

I want to tell that hon. piccaninny member at the back over there that I knew his father in this House for many years and that the way he is acting in this House is certainly no credit to his father. [Interjections.]

The hon. member for Yeoville wrote an article in the Sunday Times last week. If my memory serves me correctly, he expressed the pious hope in the last paragraph that the Information scandal become a closed book, so that we, he piously added, could tackle the real problems facing South Africa. In the last sentence of the article he said that he feared that more worms might creep out, from time to time, to the detriment of South Africa. I hope I have interpreted the hon. member correctly. [Interjections.] He seems to affirm it. The hon. member speaks, let me say at once, from the experience he has acquired in the hours, days and months that the Opposition has been debating these issues. The hon. member has been one of the chief lieutenants of the hon. Leader of the Opposition during those discussions. [Interjections.] I want to use the words of the hon. member for Yeoville to say that, like worms, the members of the Opposition have crawled over every possible aspect involving the irregularities in the erstwhile Department of Information. It is not necessary to remind the House that a worm reverts to a cocoon in its normal life cycle. It is quite significant that the Erasmus Commission has devoted an entire chapter to cocoons. If I have any criticism to make about the report of the commission, it would be for not having referred to the Opposition’s attacks on South Africa in the course of these discussions as having been made from a cocoon.

The Opposition and its Press have used every possible occasion, in and out of this House, to exaggerate and exploit, by innuendo or otherwise, to sow suspicion and to embark upon character assassination in regard to the Information scandal, and they have done so on a scale unparalleled in the history of any other Western democratic form of Government. They have even gone so far as to query the bona fides of the Erasmus Commission and its findings. The hon. Leader of the Opposition was presumptuous enough to go to the commission and prescribe to it what witnesses it should call—I hope I am interpreting him correctly—what procedures it should follow and what factors it should take into account to ensure that its findings would establish public confidence in its final report. This is what we get from a man who telephones Mr. McHenry about his country’s vital interests. Now he is so presumptuous that he has to take the step of approaching, and prescribing to, a judicial commission how it should proceed with its affairs. [Interjections.] He had but one object in that regard. His only object was to create the impression that the appointment of the commission was, in fact, a grand cover-up by the Government. To tell the truth, the record of the official Opposition clearly shows that it has stopped at nothing to politically exploit the Information scandal in the vain hope of overthrowing the Government. In doing so they have aided and abetted our enemies in their propaganda against South Africa. In fact, nowhere have they drawn the line in these discussions. They have even gone so far as to infer corruption in other Government departments and to infer that this Government is culpable and bears the guilt for the irregularities which took place in the erstwhile Department of Information.

To give an air of respectability to their wild allegations and exaggerations, what step did they embark upon? To present some air of reality to the public outside, what step did they embark upon? They submitted three files of documentation to the Erasmus Commission.

Have you seen them?

There were 90 pages of documentation, three files of 90 pages.

Do you know what is in those files.

I have formerly had occasion to challenge the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and ask him to tell us what those files contained, to tell us what factual evidence they were actually submitting to the commission.

Do you know what is in those files?

However, what did the commission say about this? I should like to quote in full what the commission had to say about this. I quote paragraph 13.10 and I hope they cannot talk this away. The commission’s opinion of the cover-up operation of the official Opposition was—

Do you agree with all their findings?

And what was the commission’s comment?

Read paragraph 13.11.

I have read paragraph 13.11. This is what the commission says about what the official Opposition did as part of their cover-up operation to justify the wild, extravagant attitudes that the official Opposition has adopted.

To cover up what?

The commission makes the emphatic statement that none of the evidence the official Opposition submitted could in any way be considered as evidence. The official Opposition well knew that what they had submitted was not factual evidence, and I, as I have already said, had occasion to challenge the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. The submissions the official Opposition made to the commission were merely part of a face-saving operation, a cover-up operation, for the extremities they have embarked upon in all the debates that have taken place. It was a cover-up operation to try to create the impression outside that there was in fact some substance in the wild allegations they had been making throughout the period during which this matter was being discussed.

The most damning indictment of the commission in the report as a whole is not directed against the former State President or others. It is, in fact, the one directed against the official Opposition. [Interjections.]

Do you accept all the commission’s findings?

Of course I … [Interjections.]

You do? [Interjections.]

I now quote from the Rand Daily Mail in regard to the evidence the official Opposition submitted. The article states—

Who was responsible? The official Opposition. I quote further—

All this was laid at the door of the official Opposition party. This is therefore a complete condemnation, by a judicial commission, of the attitude adopted by the official Opposition in all these matters. [Interjections.] There has been no end to the wild ravings of the Opposition parties, and I again want to tell the hon. member for Durban Point…

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

No, my time is limited. The hon. member for Durban Point has attempted to outdo the official Opposition in these debates. I can understand why he tried to do it, because while these debates were on the go there were two by-elections, and the hon. member for Durban Point was merely trying to make some kind of impression for his party. He did this in the vain hope that the English-language Press would give some support to his party. If he believes that, however, he is living in a political fool’s paradise.

At a time when it is of the utmost importance that we in the House should not allow confidence in South Africa’s will and ability to fight its enemies to be undermined, this Opposition has unscrupulously been depicting our Government as one indulging in corrupt practices, with cover-up operations to conceal the secret expenditure from secret funds. Therefore I say that they are aiding those who are trying to force South Africa, on the economic, political, psychological and security fronts, to abandon its present system of government. The truth is that as soon as the Government was advised by the former Auditor-General—and the hon. member for Yeoville has even attempted to bring his bona fides and position into disrepute—the Government took every possible step to have matters investigated in depth. This led to the report of the Erasmus Commission which we are now debating. [Interjections.]

The Government has clearly stated where it stands in regard to the findings of that commission. It has announced various other steps to clear up the debacle, and without fear or favour those who were responsible have had to pay the price. Those who are shown to have adopted corrupt practices and to have been party to other irregularities will, in due course, be arraigned before our courts. In this debate it is not the Government, as the Executive, which is on trial, because the Government has exonerated itself by its actions aimed at exposing everything in regard to the Information debacle. The Government, and I focus on the hon. the Prime Minister, has acted honourably and has stated the position clearly. It is the Opposition that is on trial in this debate. [Interjections.] They stand accused of misrepresenting the actions of the Government. They stand accused, together with a section of their Press, for the role they have played in this whole Information debacle. They stand accused, in all these discussions, of having played into the hands of South Africa’s enemies abroad. [Interjections.] I noted that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was very careful, in his address to the House today, to avoid saying whether they accepted the findings of the commission or not, and so I now want to ask them whether or not they accept the findings of the commission.

Do you?

Hon. members know precisely where we stand, because the Government has stated its position quite clearly. It is on record in Hansard and is also dealt with clearly in the statement made by the hon. the Prime Minister in this House in regard to this matter. [Interjections.] The hon. Opposition has, however, never stated where it stands in regard to these reports. All those members do is attempt to denigrate the value of this commission and the investigations that it has carried out. We in this House and the country are entitled to ask what the basic motivation was of the Opposition and, let me add, their Press in their unbridled and damaging attacks on the Government. What was their motive in the character assassination of leading members of the Government? As I see it, the answer lies in the fact that the Opposition and their Press believe that, by attacking individual Afrikaner personalities such as hon. Ministers and the hon. the Prime Minister, they can destroy the NP and this Government.

Like Owen Horwood.

They cannot accept or believe—because they are incapable of doing so themselves—that we of the NP put South Africa first. As a result of this fundamental motivation, country and party are to us above the importance of any individual. [Interjections.] This is why every Opposition speaker has attacked Adv. John Vorster as the former Prime Minister and State President in these debates on the Information scandal and in the no-confidence debate this year. They believe that, by attacking Afrikaner personalities, they can break this party and Government. [Interjections.] The reason is basically that in the period of stewardship as Prime Minister Adv. John Vorster, South Africa as a nation of English and Afrikaans speakers, under the principles of the NP has become united as never before.

You are breaking my heart.

I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and my erstwhile friend, the hon. member for Durban Point, sincerely across the floor of this House whether they are now happy at what has happened. Do they now rejoice at the resignation of the former State President? [Interjections.] They spent days and weeks in this House attacking the former Prime Minister. I want to ask them today whether they are now happy at what has happened. Do they rejoice in it for the sake of South Africa?

The only thing that makes us happy is that you are not in our party.

The statement made by the hon. the Prime Minister in advising of the resignation of the State President made very clear the position and the regard of the Government for his person. There is no question about it. I believe that, as a nation, we are indebted to John Vorster. I know—and I share this belief with many thousands of my fellow South Africans—that he carried with a mission the responsibility of his high office. I believe that what he did as Prime Minister, as in the case with the present hon. Prime Minister, he did in what he considered to be South Africa’s best interests in his heavy responsibility as Prime Minister.

To me, and I hope to many other English-speaking South Africans, it is horrifying to see that the English-language Press has already started a campaign to denigrate Mr. Vorster’s person and his work, as evidenced by the shocking article, written by Alan Paton, that appeared in The Argus a few days ago.

It was a very good article.

This is part of the operation of breaking down what this party meant to South Africa through the person of John Vorster. This is the start of another break-down, as we also heard it today from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Are these the worms that are still going to appear and to which the hon. member for Yeoville referred? Are these the maggots and the worms that are still going to crawl, sponsored by the hon. member for Yeoville? What else can one expect when an Opposition and a Press have unscrupulously used a Rhoodie, a self-confessed traitor, a Gen. Van den Bergh, a declared public liar, and a Mulder who lied to this House, to bolster their propaganda against the Government? [Interjections.]

Who did you vote for as Prime Minister?

For myself, I wish to say that Adv. John Vorster brought me home after my years in public life. He brought me home to the only political instrument which exists in our country through which a South African can give expression to his love of his country, and through which he can serve his country, namely the NP. [Interjections.] I remember like yesterday the words he uttered upon his election as Prime Minister of South Africa by the NP. That was on 13 September, 1966. I remember his words as though they were uttered only yesterday. Among other things he said—

I am aware … [Interjections.] I am aware that we are a small country and that our population is small in numbers. However, John Vorster said—

Now I come to the important words. [Interjections.] While hon. members opposite sit and jeer in that satirical manner of theirs, I ask them to take note of this. I quote—

I repeat his words—

Can one say the same about this official Opposition? [Interjections.] Can one look at them in their jeering attitude and be sure that they would take such a standpoint? [Interjections.] Mr. John Vorster resigned because he lived and he worked according to this code of conduct, namely that the honour of the people of our nation must never be touched. [Interjections.]

Why did you sack him then?

Mr. Speaker, I look at the Opposition across the floor of this House, particularly at the official Opposition. I want to ask them whether they have no shame. [Interjections.] Have they not, through their actions in these debates, brought dishonour to their people and to their country? [Interjections.]

I should like to conclude … [Interjections.] … by quoting these words of Mr. John Vorster, words which, I believe, are appropriate to refer to in this final debate on the Information scandal.

Whatever you do, please do not cry.

He said—

And it is good that his words be heard in this House today.

We shall fall here and there because it is human and because circumstances may cause it to happen. However, I know one thing, one thing for which I am profoundly grateful. As often as they fall the people of South Africa will again find the strength and the grace to rise and go forward.

Bring your sheet music along next time. [Interjections.]

As far as the Almighty God gave it to a man to work out his own destiny, the destiny of South Africa will be decided here by South Africans themselves. This NP Government, under our present Prime Minister, has found the strength and the grace, after the Information debacle, to rise and go forward. Let the Opposition understand that South Africa will go forward and that the vision and the might of John Vorster will continue to travel with this party on the road ahead.

Mr. Speaker, out of the welter of obscure clichés which the hon. member for Von Brandis thought fit to peddle across the floor of the House, only one thing stands out, and that is that he thought it proper to attack the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Durban Point for, of all things, “attacking”—that is his word—or criticizing Mr. Vorster in the no-confidence debate this year. This is not something I would have wished to discuss, but it is astounding that in this particular week, at this particular time, in a debate on this particular report, that hon. gentleman stands up in this House and says that. He forces me to ask him whether he does or does not accept the report’s findings on Mr. Vorster, and I am referring to the report we are debating this afternoon.

Do you?

If he does he has absolutely no business criticizing the two hon. gentlemen on this side of the House, and if he does not he has his own problems to sort out in his own party. However, for him to criticize these hon. gentlemen who had the courage to adopt what was then an extremely unpopular attitude because they believe it was necessary to do so, in the very week in which they have been vindicated up to the hilt by the Government’s own commission, is absolutely astounding; so much so, in fact, that it takes my breath away. [Interjections.]

The other extraordinary thing—and this is something I was not going to touch on either—is that in his inimitable, fresh language he said that without fear or favour those who were responsible have been made to pay the price. I am not sure what the hon. gentleman means by saying that those who were responsible have been made to pay the price. It is true that we have been assured this afternoon, by the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, that all the necessary prosecutions are proceeding and that in due course we shall be hearing about them. The only people who have been prosecuted, however, and therefore asked to pay a price so far, have been Mr. Sparks and the other gentleman from the Rand Daily Mail. Those are the only ones. There have thus far been no other prosecutions. There have been plenty of findings by the commission suggesting prosecutions, but thus far nothing new has happened. I am not going to follow this road particularly far because it has to do with the administrative arm of Government rather than with the contents of the report itself, but that hon. member’s statement is a most remarkable one, even for the hon. member for Von Brandis. No wonder that my hon. friend here said that he should bring his music with him next time.

*The third thing the hon. member did, was to repeat exactly what the hon. the Minister had said earlier—something to which I wanted to react in any case—with regard to this party and the commission’s findings in regard to this party. The hon. member quoted from paragraph 13.10, in fact, the exact words which the hon. the Minister also quoted, viz.—

However, what the hon. member omitted to do—and in terms of his argument it was an omission, although I am not saying that in respect of the hon. the Minister—was also to quote paragraph 13.11 or paragraph 13.31. However, I shall do him the favour of quoting it on his behalf. Firstly, paragraph 13.11—

I shall still come to that—

The hon. member said that no part of it was evidence, but “the commission decided to admit them in evidence”. That quotation is four or five lines further down from where he ended his quotation. [Interjections.]

Deliberate cover-up.

I shall now quote from paragraph 13.31—

Of course it falls short of de facto proof.

In this regard, I come now to something which the hon. the Minister said. He repeated that we had waited a long time before going to the commission and that when we had eventually gone to the commission, the commission had said these things.

That is sheer balderdash.

With this, the hon. the Minister simply confirmed what we had said repeatedly about this matter from these benches during previous debates. We said that we had no original evidence to give before the committee for the very good reason that we had not been the people who had been responsible for all the irregularities. It was the Government that had been responsible for them. For this reason it was impossible for us from the beginning to give any first-hand evidence on the irregularities. What we were able to do after a time, was to make a study of the matter. The commission duly expresses its appreciation for the quality of the research. We made a study of everything that had been published up to that stage and from that we made a submission which the commission expressly appreciated.

While I am now dealing with this criticism against us, I come to paragraph 2.3(i) in which the most stringent criticism was levelled at us. The commission refers to—

It is true and has been known since that day in November last year that the hon. members for Yeoville and Bezuidenhout and I went to the commission on behalf of the PFP before the commission commenced its activities. We went to inquire whether we would be entitled to representation at the commission’s meetings. We first asked whether it was the intention of the commission to sit in public; if not, whether we could then have representation, either through one of our number or through a legal practitioner appointed by us. I can understand that the commission did not want to allow that, but I cannot understand, with the best will in the world, what is improper about that, to say nothing about the other adjectives such as “improper, disparaging and hindering”. I cannot but say that we take exception to those findings of the commission. We think they are unfair and unjust when measured against the facts.

That criticism by the commission was uncalled for.

I want to come next to what are, in my opinion, the most dangerous aspects of the whole sad story we are again discussing today. The irregular deeds and the misappropriation of funds are all very serious, but as far as I am concerned, the most dangerous aspect remains the way in which Parliament and its rules were ignored throughout all the developments which led to the Information scandal. Whatever the case may be as far as the actions of the main characters in the scandal are concerned, funds which hon. members of this House and their immediate predecessors voted in good faith for the Department of Defence or for the Bureau of State Security, were unlawfully transferred to a different Vote. It is as plain as a pikestaff that that is true and I do not believe that there are many disputes or arguments about this fact. It is therefore unnecessary to quote any proof of this.

Before this book is closed, the country has the right to know how it happened. It is clear from the first report of the commission that it happened, but there is no clarity in regard to how it was done and who had been responsible for it. We made progress with the second report of the commission in the sense that it was indicated there that the triumvirate of Mr. Vorster, Dr. Mulder and Dr. Rhoodie terrorized other people in Government circles, as it were, and forced them to participate in these illegal activities. We were able to accept it at the time and it was of course confirmed by what has since taken place. However, it simply indicates where the pressure from above came from and does not yet indicate who exactly was responsible for the illegal deed which was committed when the money was transferred from one Vote to another. I think this is one of the matters that still remains unsolved, in respect of which action will have to be taken and findings will still have to be published before this book can finally be closed, if one may put it like that. We as members of Parliament have a specific duty to ensure that it should be done because we can now realize from what has happened in South Africa during the past year, more than ever before, how dangerous it is when these rules are ignored, for it is perfectly clear that, if the rules had been adhered to, it would have been ensured that money would not have been transferred from the Vote for which it had been voted to another Vote; it would have been impossible for The Citizen incident to take place; it would have been impossible for three-quarters or more of the irregularities to have taken place in the Department of Information.

Why keep on going into the details? Why not deal with the principle?

It may be a detail to the hon. member for Von Brandis that Parliament is treated with contempt by the members of the Cabinet, but it is not a matter of detail for us.

We have all read the report.

Order!

The point is that central to the whole scandal we are talking about and central to the fact that the State President has found it necessary to resign, is the fact that there was abuse of the established procedures of this Parliament by officials of Parliament themselves. This is no detail. This is at least as important as anything else. I mention it here because we do not have the clear and final answer to this question, not even from this final report. I do not say this necessarily as criticism of the commission—perhaps it had other things to do—but I say that this is one of the tasks that still has to be fulfilled.

There is another task, upon which my leader touched briefly, that needs to be carried out, another set of facts that need to be made clear. I refer to the facts concerning the disposal of The Citizen. In the new report the commission has simply said that it was not going to deal with the matter. I quote the report (paragraph 11.38, page 50)—

Incidentally, why the establishment of To The Point in competition with other magazines is not a gross irregularity is beyond me, but that is not what I am concerned with now. In paragraph 11.39 one reads further that—

So be it, Sir—the commission makes no finding. On the other hand the commission came with very clear findings—and I am very glad they did—on the donation of very considerable State funds to The Citizen long after the old Department of Information had ceased to exist. That fits in oddly with this finding here, but so be it. The commission has decided that this matter was beyond its terms of reference. That does not mean, in my view, that Parliament can afford to ignore the sale of The Citizen to Perskor.

In the first report we have the story of the cross-examination, at the time, of Mr. Vorster and the commission’s findings in that regard. In paragraph 10.337 on page 73 of that report one finds the words—and hon. members will remember them—

The commission went on to explain this, saying (p. 74)—

So it continues. In the Pretorius Committee’s report of 30 November there was a slightly different figure, but essentially the same story—

We therefore have a situation where both the Erasmus Commission and the Pretorius Committee say that around the end of 1978 The Citizen had a liability of about R13 million to R16 million to Perskor. Later on, in February 1978, we find that this paper was given to Mr. Van Zyl Alberts, about whom we have a lot of new information this week, which makes this story all the more piquant. We have the findings of the commission that during the period that Mr. Van Zyl Alberts was managing The Citizen more than R5 million of State funds was pumped into it. Now, firstly, the fact that more than R5 million of State funds was pumped into The Citizen during the so-called ownership of the paper by Mr. Van Zyl Alberts, makes nonsense of the fact that he ever did own the paper, because I cannot believe that, even in terms of the Information scandal, even this Government would give R5 million to a paper that belonged to Mr. Van Zyl Alberts. I hope I am right in that.

In the second instance, it brings us to the time when the paper was disposed of to Perskor. The facts are all set out in these reports. The purchase price was said to be R2,3 million and the net asset value of The Citizen was said to be R400 000. In other words, the printing contract liability was valued at something in the order of R1,9 million. Surely, we are interested in the difference between the R13 million to R16 million and the R1,9 million a few months later. Even if The Citizen had been making money at the rate at which it was losing money, the liability would not have come down to that extent. There is something very extraordinary here. Either there never was a liability of R13 million or R16 million, in which case Mr. Vorster and the Pretorius Committee were both grievously misled and that needs to be investigated, or there was a liability of R13 million or R16 million. In that case, if there was a liability of R13 million to R16 million to Perskor, then how has Perskor treated its own shareholders? If it is the case that The Citizen, which, as I have said, was in effect owned by the State right up to the end because the ownership of The Citizen by Mr. Van Zyl Alberts was a farce and nonsense, genuinely owed the shareholders of Perskor R16 million, it was the duty of the directors of Perskor to get that R16 million for their shareholders, and not to buy a bankrupt newspaper for R2 million, of which R1,9 million in any case represented a debt by The Citizen to them. Here we have a situation that cries out for investigation. Government Tender Board procedures were not followed—and that has been raised previously. The sale of the newspaper to Perskor was negotiated without anybody else being given an opportunity. There was indeed the sale of a printing press and, although The Argus made an offer in excess of what The Citizen appeared to be receiving for this press, yet the sale went through, the liability of R13 million to R16 million vanished into thin air and the commission finds that this lies outside its terms of reference. Here is another matter which is going to have to be cleared up before we can finally close the book on the Information scandal.

More corruption, more cover-ups.

I have no doubt that there are others to come. My hon. colleague will deal with other aspects, but these things have to be opened up if the Government wants to reach the stage it says it is trying to reach, the stage where we can again talk about clean administration in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I only have a very short period of time allocated to me and therefore I am not able to deal with the arguments of the hon. member for Parktown or with the report itself in detail.

In the debate during the short session of 1978, I said that I believed that it was right that we should wait for the findings of the committees and the commissions and then judge the Government on the actions it takes to put right what was probably wrong in the former Department of Information. I believe that that viewpoint I held in December of last year was the correct one.

The hon. member for Walmer, during that same debate, moved an amendment in which, inter alia, he called upon the Government to take certain steps arising from the Information matter. We have looked at the steps which we proposed in that debate should have been taken and it seems to us that those steps are either being taken or indications have been given by the Government that those steps will be taken. However, we did call on the Government to create an effective Information Service under the auspices of a fully-fledged department, and that has not been carried out. Instead of that, the Government has created an Information Service as part of the Department of Foreign Affairs. We are still of the opinion that South Africa needs a fully-fledged Information Department of its own in view of the important work that should be done by such a department for South Africa.

I want to say something about judicial commissions. We in these benches hold judicial commissions in very high esteem indeed. There have been occasions in past years when some of us have asked the Government to appoint judicial commissions, but on those occasions the matter, in question were, in our opinion, very important matters that should have been the subject of judicial investigations. In recent years there seems to have been a tendency, whenever any matter is unsatisfactory, for Opposition members and, for that matter, members of the public and newspapers to call for the appointment of judicial commissions, but we prize very highly the establishment of a judicial commission and we believe the appointment of such commissions should be restricted only to matters of really great importance. Obviously, in this particular case the Erasmus Commission should have been a judicial commission and we welcomed the appointment of that commission.

During the debate on the first report of the Erasmus Commission we said that we accepted the findings of that commission. We also accepted the findings contained in the interim report, which was made available to members at the end of March. I want to say again today that we accept the findings contained in this last report of the Erasmus Commission.

Did you vote for Vorster as State President?

What on earth is the sense of asking for a judicial commission to be appointed—and I address my remarks as much to the Government as to the other Opposition parties—if one is not going to accept its findings? Let me deal with the commission for a minute. It has been faced, in its own words, with unwarranted attacks, criticisms and insinuations. It has been subjected, again in its own words, to interference by the official Opposition. It was called a farce by Gen. Van den Bergh. The Transvaal Attorney-General refused to deal with a clear-cut case of contempt of the commission by Gen. Van den Bergh, and the hon. the Minister of Justice refused to intervene, as he should have intervened, to force a contempt case against Gen. Van den Bergh in that matter. Public statements have been made about the work of the commission by all and sundry throughout the life-span of the commission. Newspapers have suggested that, unless the evidence was published, the findings were unsubstantiated—as if every Tom, Dick and Harry was able to read evidence, then to comment with authority on the findings of a judicial commission without having heard the witnesses. Insinuations of a cover-up by the commission as far as Cabinet Ministers were concerned were freely made in newspapers and by members of the public. Newspapers hindered the commission’s work by serializing stories instead of giving evidence to the Erasmus Commission. This also applies to hon. members of the other Opposition parties.

I want to say that never in the history of judicial commissions in South Africa can a commission have sat under more difficult circumstances than did the Erasmus Commission. We in these benches want to pay tribute to Judge Erasmus and his fellow-commissioners for the work they have done. It was a strong team consisting of a judge of the Supreme Court, an Attorney-General and a senior Government law adviser. If South Africans cannot have confidence in them, then they cannot have confidence in any individual or any established and recognized body in the Republic. If we do not have confidence in the work of that commission, it will mean that those who seek to destroy the very foundations of our society and confidence in our institutions, have succeeded in attaining their objective. Public confidence in the proper control of public administration has, in my opinion, been restored to a very large extent by the Erasmus Commission.

Only the Erasmus Commission has heard the evidence; only they cross-examined the witnesses; only they accumulated all the evidence; only they were in a position to form an objective and an overall judgment. That judgment we accept and we cannot understand on what basis other people have reason to doubt the judgment passed by that commission.

Arising from this report, I want to say something about the Department of Information. From the very start—and this was the view we adopted in this House in December —the affairs of the Department of Information, and more particularly the spheres into which they moved, were incompetently handled within a wholly inadequate framework. There were imaginative schemes by the leaders of that department. They did what they thought to be necessary twilight work and they obviously worked closely with the Bureau for State Security. But that work was done by a Secretary who was paid a salary of something like R1 300 per month. He tried to work within the framework of an antiquated departmental system and under the antiquated system of the Public Service Commission.

When Mr. Barrie found irregularities, we think the Government should have accepted full responsibility for the work that had been done by the Department of Information and that the Government at that stage should have given an undertaking to prosecute those people who were obviously guilty of corruption, or were allegedly guilty of corruption, in the proper sense of the word. When I use the word “corruption”, I mean self-enrichment and the actions of people who have abused their positions to financially enrich themselves. I do not use the word “conuption” to cover such matters as, in my opinion, errors of judgment on the part of the Government in the founding of The Citizen. But the Government has shown over a long period of time—and I do not talk only of the last few months; I am talking of a long period of time since Mr. Barrie first made his report—an appearance of paralysis and almost near-panic on certain occasions. Much of what the Department of Information did was good; there was nothing to be ashamed about at all. For example, the Foreign Affairs Association by all accounts did very good work. The other body dealing with international affairs—the name escapes me now— also did very good work. The commission found that the Institute for the Study of Plural Societies did good work. I make no bones about saying here today—and I say this with the strength of public opinion behind me— that the magazine To The Point has done excellent work for South Africa.

Come off it!

We in these benches have said that The Citizen should not have been financed by public funds, and I am particularly pleased to read in that newspaper today that a new board of directors has been established, consisting of English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans of stature in the business world and in the professional world. It is also good news indeed that there is shortly to be a share issue to all South Africans who can then take part in building up that very, very necessary South African newspaper.

It should be a free share issue.

Are they going to give taxpayers free shares?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the holding of the 1977 general election. I want to say to him that the reasons that were given for the holding of that election were valid reasons. In the first place, it was necessary, in view of the pressures from the Western countries on South Africa, for South Africa to speak with a united voice, as was the case with most parties, in Government and in Opposition, against the threats and pressures of the West. Secondly, the reason that was given was that there was going to be a new constitutional dispensation. I believe that was a valid reason for holding an election. The third reason that was given was the state of the Opposition. The chaotic state of the Opposition had nothing to do with the Government. The state of the Opposition was due entirely to the undermining efforts of the PFP and those who were previously the members of the Reform Party, aided and assisted by their allies in the English-language Press. That was the reason for the disruption of the Opposition before the 1977 election.

You had nothing to do with it yourself?

I would say that those people who took part in the breaking down of the United Party were responsible for a disservice to the country.

I believe there is a clearing-up job that has to be done by the Government On the last pages of its latest report the commission makes certain recommendations and certain submissions to the Government. The paralysis must be shaken off by the Government, and the steps that have been advocated by various hon. Ministers as having to be taken, as well as the submissions and recommendations by the Erasmus Commission, must in the interest of the country be taken. I wonder whether this is not an appropriate time to remind hon. members that we as a country are in a fight for our survival. That does not apply only to us who sit here in Parliament, but also to the White people, the Brown people and the Black people outside. We are all engaged in a fight for survival at this very moment.

To refer to the petrol price increases, this is going to have an accumulative and inflationary effect which will probably lead to unemployment throughout the country. In the case of South West Africa there is a crisis involving the White people of that territory, and they cannot just be shrugged off as not being the responsibility of South Africa, because they are our responsibility. Further there is a real danger of sanctions by the United Nations and there is terrorism on our borders involving the loss of lives of our young people. Terrorism is also rearing its ugly head from time to time in the cities of South Africa. There is in addition a real danger of physical intervention by the United Nations in the affairs of Southern Africa. I think South Africans largely are at this stage far more concerned with their safety, their security and their future in South Africa and in Southern Africa than with this continuing pursuit of a matter that has now hopefully finally been dealt with by the final report of the Erasmus Commission. I believe all South Africans expect the Government to give a lead, and they also expect from those Opposition party members who have any grain of responsibility in them, to try to find common ground and to unite in the times that lie ahead of us.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Simonstown made a well-considered and well-prepared speech. This is the type of speech one expects from a responsible member of the Opposition and also the type of speech which I think should be studied thoroughly by the Government. However, the hon. member must pardon me if I do not elaborate on his speech, because there are two aspects of the speech by the hon. member for Durban Point to which I want to refer before coming to my own speech.

In the first place I want to tell him that I appreciate the fact that he referred to Mr. John Vorster in such favourable terms. He differs from him, but he had respect for him, and although he did not approve of certain aspects of the latter half of his term of office, he nevertheless described him in favourable terms. This is something that cannot be expected of the official Opposition. They are too bitter, too malicious and frustrated, to dwell for one moment on the good qualities of a statesman who was respected and renowned throughout the length and breadth of the world. I believe it is to their eternal discredit and that they have not even had the decency at this late stage to display a gracious attitude when discussing this great statesman.

I should like to refer to a further aspect of the speech by the hon. member. He is concerned about the fact that there is a danger that the democratic institution, as we know and love it, could come to grief owing to the circumstances which prevailed in the former Department of Information. He fears that democracy is going to suffer in the struggle against Marxism owing to the action taken. Did I understand the hon. member correctly? I think nothing is further from the truth than that statement. If there is one chapter, one episode in which democracy played its role as we should like to see it to be played, then it has been the handling by the Government of the Information tragedy. One realizes this if one reviews the whole episode from the beginning. I do not want to outline the events again, but I just want to say that the Erasmus Commission report is itself an example and a demonstration of how democracy, in its true form, works and how the Government respects democracy. The fact that people who enjoyed prestige in this Parliament and also in this country suffered in the process, is due to the work of democracy. Consequently I believe that the hon. member’s statements in this regard are totally unfounded and uncalled for. It is understandable that the Opposition is so overcome by frustration. I call it enjoyable frustration. Since the discussion of the first report of the Erasmus Commission in December 1978, they have continued to incite public opinion against the Government with all the bitter malice at their disposal. What have they achieved? In the two subsequent by-elections where they put up candidates, the official Opposition received a total of a little more than 1 000 votes and this is in spite of this unabated, bitter and dedicated campaign of theirs. And then the hon. Leader of the Opposition still has the temerity to ask the Government to resign so that an election can be held. He was angry about the election that took place in November 1977, and now wants another election. How is one to understand the logic of such an argument?

At present, by-elections are being held throughout the length and breadth of this country, and it is well known that when by-elections take place, the scale always swings in favour of the Opposition. The whole spectrum of Government policy can be attacked, all forces can be concentrated in that constituency to prove one’s strength. At present, by-elections are taking place in the Transvaal and Natal, and even in the Free State and in the Cape. Consequently it is up to the Opposition to prove there is a reason for the Government to resign and to have a general election.

The Opposition has set to work like a Shylock. They have demanded and received their pound of flesh. But they have received not only their pound of flesh; blood has flowed now too. South Africa is bleeding as a result of the events of the past eight months. A quiet anger is building up. This has not been incited by the Government, but by the Opposition. The Opposition stuck to this Information tragedy and has emphasized and exaggerated it until it has become counterproductive. As a result of that South Africa is bleeding, and I blame the official Opposition for that.

They claimed the head of the darling of the nation and succeeded. If there is still a grain of political decency in them, they must now keep silent. The nation of South Africa will take cognizance of how they reacted when the hon. member for Von Brandis referred to Mr. Vorster with great respect. There was cackling, laughter and rejoicing at the fact that Mr. Vorster’s head had rolled. South Africa will remember that.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the collective responsibility of the Cabinet. One cannot but ask oneself whether the official Opposition should not assume collective responsibility for the inane conduct of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition when he made that telephone call to Mr. McHenry. We find the standpoint in respect of collective responsibility in the first report of the Erasmus Commission. There the principle that the Cabinet is responsible to Parliament “for the general conduct of affairs” is spelt out. Therefore, the Erasmus Commission took cognizance of this principle of collective responsibility. In Hansard, 7 December 1978, the hon. the Minister of the Interior and Immigration argued further on this premise and quoted the authoritative work by Wade and Bradley, Constitutional Law. He referred in particular to pages 86 and 87 of that publication. For the sake of completeness allow me to quote the part to which the hon. the Minister referred (Hansard, 7 December 1978, col. 118)—

This is the premise. The fact of the matter is that for a Cabinet to be collectively responsible, prior knowledge is an essential prerequisite. In the same speech the hon. the Minister invited the commission, as it were, to delve more deeply into the aspect of collective responsibility. I argue that the commission did in fact do this. The circumstances which gave rise to the submission of the interim report show beyond question that the commission had to investigate the question whether a member of the Cabinet had had any knowledge of certain irregularities. The commission made its findings, bearing in mind at all times the convention of collective responsibility. Surely the commission would not have made this statement pertinently if it had not regarded this as its point of departure in its deliberations.

However, the official Opposition was still not satisfied with this. On 7 December 1978 the hon. member for Parktown said (Hansard, 7 December 1978, col. 125)—

The hon. member alleged that the Cabinet as a whole bears the responsibility. However, after submission of the first report the commission once again had the opportunity to investigate this specific aspect Now, in the final report, the commission refers once again to the finding it made in the first report. However, before coming to that, I just want to repeat, for the sake of my argument, that while the official Opposition argued in this House that a collective responsibility existed, they apparently made no effort to win the commission over to this point of view.

In the first place they allowed the willing Prof. Oliver to testify under oath that the Hansard reports were exact and correct I want to agree with hon. members on this side of the House that in my opinion, the most pathetic episode in this whole history of the Erasmus Commission was the feeble effort made by hon. members of the official Opposition to put their case before that commission. They did not have the courage of their convictions to go and testify there. They came forward with Hansard reports and with certain other reports they had drafted. The hon. member for Yeoville, who is always so loquacious in this House and who always becomes involved in every street fight, did not, however, have the courage of his convictions to go and testify before the Erasmus Commission. [Interjections.] However, the commission made short work of the arguments of the official Opposition. Now I find it somewhat strange that the hon. member for Parktown did not also refer to another very important finding made by the commission. He referred to various paragraphs, inter alia, paragraph 13.31, but just after that he did not complete his quotation by referring to paragraph 13.32 as well. Paragraph 13.32 reads—

Can you credit that, Sir—

These are not even checked reports, but in fact unchecked reports—

Subsequently the commission stated briefly and concisely in paragraph 13.33—

In paragraph 13.20 of the report now under discussion the commission referred once again to paragraphs 10.316 to 10.318 of the first report. In those paragraphs the commission deals with the question of collective responsibility. Consequently I want to make the statement that the commission was aware throughout of the principle of collective responsibility. Notwithstanding this, the commission found that no member of the present Cabinet should have any joint responsibility whatsoever.

The hon. member for Parktown is still unhappy about the finding of the commission concerning the decision to use funds by way of the transfer thereof from one department to another. I want to refer him to paragraph 10.316 which deals with the evidence of Mr. Vorster. There he says that he accepted personal responsibility for the use of these moneys and for the method by which they were utilized. In addition Mr. Vorster went on to say in his evidence that he had made this statement on 8 May 1978. He pointed out that the Opposition had never questioned this arrangement in Parliament. The findings of the commission—I want to repeat it—is that he was aware throughout of the principle of collective responsibility and notwithstanding this fact, on the basis of the authority of Wade, it found that the members of the present Cabinet bear no collective responsibility in respect of this matter.

I now come to a further aspect. We should also examine other examples from contemporary history in connection with the question of collective responsibility. I am thinking, for example, of the case of Mr. Nixon. Mr. Nixon and those who were directly involved and had direct knowledge of the Watergate events resigned. None of the members of his Cabinet who had no prior knowledge of the events also resigned in the process.

As the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications said, the criminal and civil law consequences of the findings of the commission will now take effect. The Government has pledged itself to continue with this process. Let me now tell hon. members of the Opposition that the public of South Africa are heartily sick and tired of the unsavoury things that have come out of the Information tragedy. The hon. members of the Opposition have been warned: Not even a tragedy of such proportions could swing the balance in favour of the Opposition. In spite of traumatic events over a period of less than a year in the life of the NP, it stands united behind its leader. This is totally beyond the understanding of the Opposition. They and their Press have one relentless aim in South Africa and that is to cause the National Party to split, but they will not succeed in doing so, because this party has principles. It has a cause greater than the sum of its members. But what is more, it knows what is at stake for South Africa and Southern Africa. We shall continue to govern South Africa and to keep it secure for everyone that loves it, in spite of an Opposition which has become irrelevant and no longer has any power base among the electorate of South Africa. Let us, who put the interests of South Africa first, take the matter further in a spirit of progressive unity and fulfil our God-given calling.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Brakpan, who has just resumed his seat, made some quite incredible statements in this House this afternoon. First of all he referred to the impeccable handling, by the Government, of the whole Information affair. Let us look, however, at what that impeccable handling entailed. In August 1977 Reynders was appointed, a man who proved to be a broken reed. Then the Select Committee on Public Accounts reported and thereafter Gen. Van den Bergh was appointed to investigate the affairs of the very department in which he had played a major role. This brings me to the hon. present Prime Minister who knew that such an affair had taken place, that The Citizen had been funded with State funds. What did he do about it? Did he appoint a commission of inquiry? Of course he did not He set up another internal, governmental administrative inquiry, and it was only when his hand was forced by the disclosures made by Mr. Justice Mostert that he finally appointed a judicial commission, something that should have been done in August 1977. [Interjections.] It was only a year and a half later, when the public eventually knew of the situation, that the hon. the Prime Minister had his hand forced. He did not want to appoint that judicial commission. He had his hand forced by the statements of Mr. Justice Mostert.

That is not true.

Then I want to return …

That is not true.

If that is not true, may I ask the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs why the hon. the Prime Minister appointed that commission so soon after Mr. Justice Mostert had opened his mouth?

He told you that he got a report from the Pretorius Committee.

I now want to come to the speech of the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications. He has made certain statements about private conversations that he had with Mr. B. J. Vorster while he was still the State President. He has brought evidence to this House about the fact that Mr. Vorster had told him about resigning some considerable time before he actually did resign. [Interjections.] He gave us that evidence. Does he want us to believe that Adv. B. J. Vorster’s resignation had nothing to do with the Information affair? Is he asking us to believe that?

You should not mention that name.

Of course he is not Secondly, the hon. the Minister gave us that evidence on the basis of that confidential meeting, but when asked a perfectly reasonable question by the hon. member for Groote Schuur about whether Adv. B. J. Vorster gave him his reasons for resigning there was again a great hoo-ha about the fact that Mr. Vorster was not here to give evidence. The hon. the Minister had just given us evidence, but he was not prepared to fill in the gaps by giving those reasons.

On 8 May nobody knew what was in this report.

Perhaps not, but then may I ask what the reasons were? Is he prepared to give us those reasons?

That has nothing to do with you. [Interjections.]

The third thing I want to come to that has been said in this debate, is something that was said by the hon. member for Von Brandis, who is always very keen to shake his long finger at us. He made the statement that the NP puts South Africa first, puts it above everything else. Is that right?

Yes, that is correct.

May I then refer that hon. member to a statement made in 1975 by the present hon. Prime Minister, who was then the hon. the Minister of Defence, namely that the NP is an instrument of Afrikanerdom. I quoted that in the House in the No-confidence debate this session, but I do not have the Hansard reference with me here and now. It was, however, said in 1975 and the question then arose in my mind: If the NP is nothing but an instrument of Afrikanerdom, in a conflict between South Africa and the Afrikaner, what will happen, what decision will the NP make? [Interjections.]

You are a hater of the Boers.

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

Order!

No, Sir, he cannot ask a question. That hon. member can neither ask nor answer a question.

We have heard a lot in the course of this debate about Cabinet responsibility. I want to come to a matter which I consider to be of more importance than Cabinet responsibility. I want to talk about the direct responsibility of members of the present Cabinet who were involved directly in the Information affair.

Now, you’re in for it.

Obviously, I am referring, firstly, to the very person who made the money available from his Vote to the Department of Information—and if that is not direct involvement, I do not know what it is. The second direct involvement was that of the hon. the Minister of Finance who, administratively, ensured that the money was taken from one Vote and given to the other.

Who was the first person you referred to?

Obviously, the hon. the Prime Minister. We have reached the stage in the Information affair where we have two down and two to go. One wonders where the next cut-off point is going to be. We first had the cut-off of Waldeck; then we had the cut-off point of Denys Rhoodie; then we had the cut-off point of Eschel Rhoodie; then we had the cut-off point of the former Minister of Information, Dr. Connie Mulder; the next cut-off point was the former hon. Prime Minister. I wonder where the next cut-off point is going to be and I wonder how comfortable members of the Cabinet can feel, not knowing whether they are going to be next to be thrown to the wolves. As I have said, Dr. Connie Mulder was the first big fish whose name fell in this affair and Adv. B. J. Vorster was the second one. As I have indicated, two more have shared direct Cabinet responsibility.

Before I go on to the part played by the hon. the Prime Minister, I first want to deal fairly briefly with the hon. the Minister of Finance. To follow an example set in the Erasmus Commission’s report, I should like to head this particular chapter “The Teller of Many Tales”. The first tale he told was the tale in regard to the signing away of R14,8 million of the public’s money. He said he was put under pressure to sign in a hurry and was not given an opportunity of going through the documents since the matter was far too urgent. Is this the action of a responsible person, who signs away R14,8 million because he is urged that the whole matter is urgent? The second tale was told in this very House when the hon. the Minister of Finance said that the projects were in some sort of code. How did he know that, if he was not given time to go through the document? I have read that document completely and timed myself in doing so. It takes me precisely five minutes to read the entire document, without skimming through it at all. But, of course, the hon. the Minister of Finance could not go through it because it was too urgent.

Then we come to the third tale. The hon. the Minister said that he covered up the documents so he could not see what he was signing. He could not even see the reference to To The Point.

[Inaudible.]

Those are the very words the hon. the Minister of Finance used.

Would you buy a second-hand car from a Minister like that?

In the Interim Report of the Erasmus Commission we find the actual document itself reproduced, the document the hon. the Minister signed at the bottom of each single page. If one looks at that, one sees that he really cannot make all three statements and expect us to believe all three of them.

The hon. the Minister of Finance repeatedly told the commission that he was trying to get more information about the secret projects and that he continually instructed the Secretary of the Treasury, I think it was, to write letters to Dr. Eschel Rhoodie in order to get more information. Yet, when he has the very information in front of him in a document, he covers it up—and he has been asking to obtain that information for a number of months. At the same time, he said that he was invited to a meeting of various members of the Cabinet with Dr. Eschel Rhoodie; yet, the very Minister who had been asking for more knowledge of the projects has to disappear from that meeting because he has urgent business elsewhere. What can have been more urgent?

He saw nothing.

He saw nothing. Oh, what a tangled tale he has woven!

Then there is the To The Point story. I must confess that I find the finding of the Erasmus Commission in its latest report very unsatisfactory in regard to To The Point. I find it a totally unsatisfactory story. As the hon. member for Parktown, I think, said, we have not taken the story to its logical end. How many copies of To The Point were bought in each year? How much was spent per copy? What I really want to come to here is, once again, the story of the teller of many tales, because if one looks at page 57 of the Interim Report, one finds there a statement by the hon. the Minister of Finance in reply to a question by Mr. Lategan. The question put to the hon. the Minister reads, inter alia, as follows—

To that the hon. the Minister of Finance replied as follows—

Then, on page 64 one reads that Mr. Lategan asked the hon. the Minister the following—

The hon. the Minister replied as follows—

Mr. Lategan went on to ask—

And the hon. the Minister replied—

These were very straight-forward questions and they were answered in a very straightforward manner by the hon. the Minister of Finance. I do not think the questions could have been misunderstood; they stand perfectly clearly in the commission’s report. They were perfectly clear questions. Then we have the extraordinary statement by the same hon. Minister which I want to quote from Hansard. (Hansard, 4 May 1979, col. 5656)—

That is the question and answer I have just quoted from the Interim Report—

How can that possibly have been a mistake? It was either a complete misstatement or a complete truth.

What is the new story?

We do not have a new story because the hon. the Minister, despite having been attacked in that same debate, has refused to give a personal explanation. We waited patiently for the Erasmus Commission to report on this situation, but there is nothing in this document about it. What impression is then left in the minds of hon. members of this House and of the public outside? The question in respect of the statement I have read out from the Interim Report of the Erasmus Commission is whether the hon. the Minister of Finance told the truth to the Erasmus Commission.

Order! The hon. member cannot say that. He must withdraw it.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it.

I should now like to turn to the part played by the hon. the Prime Minister in this affair. First of all, he transferred R56 950 000 from the Special Defence Account direct to the Department of Information. Possibly it was more than that, because another $10 million disappeared to Switzerland, most of which is still missing. I want to quote section 2(2)(a) of the Defence Special Account Act, No. 6 of 1974—

Therefore it was quite clear that this money, voted by this very House, could only be utilized by the hon. the Minister of Defence for those two purposes. These were moneys to be spent by the Department of Defence and by the Armaments Board. By no stretch of the imagination can we believe that this money was spent by either of those two departments. It was spent by the Department of Information. Firstly, therefore, I maintain that so transferring the money was in direct contravention of an Act of this Parliament and therefore an illegal act. Unfortunately, the Act does not provide for an offence in this regard. One wonders whether the Government, when it passed this particular Act in 1974, when the Department of Information thing was already on the go, did not have that in mind in not making it a criminal offence punishable by a sentence of imprisonment. This was the first thing he did. Then, he says he objected to the fact that he had to do it, and he thinks that that should excuse him. How can it possibly excuse him? If I appear before a judge on a charge of burglary and I say to him that I did not want to do it, but that my friends, with whom I went, persuaded me to do it, do hon. members think that will be accepted in a court of law as an excuse? I believe it makes the affair even worse, because he knew he was doing wrong—and, knowing he did wrong, he nevertheless did it.

The second point I have against him, is that as we now know, he was made aware of the situation on 26 September 1978 when the whole Cabinet was informed, and nevertheless he reappointed as his Minister of Plural Relations and Development, Dr. Connie Mulder, the very man all the information released during that Cabinet meeting was all about. What is more, he led that party in voting for Adv. B. J. Vorster as the State President in the full knowledge of the information disclosed in that Cabinet meeting of 26 September 1978. Furthermore, he hushed up the situation regarding The Citizen by not informing the public and apparently not even his own caucus. From 26 September until 3 November of the same year the hon. the Prime Minister was in possession of the facts in regard to the Department of Information and their spending of the money that he himself had given them. And did he make any disclosure? No.

So we come to his action to try to ensure that this sort of thing will never happen again; not an action that will ensure clean government, but an action that will ensure the exact opposite, and that is putting forward before this House the Advocate-General Bill in the form in which it first appeared, an act which has done South Africa incredible harm.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that when I heard that this report of Mr. Justice Erasmus was to be discussed in this House this afternoon, I expected the official Opposition and the other opposition parties to advance new arguments as to why this scandal, as they call it, could not die down or be allowed to subside.

We have debated this matter for three hours now, and nothing new has come forward that could condemn anyone in the present Government, from the hon. the Prime Minister down to the last Deputy Minister, or link any one of them to the information debacle. That is why I feel—and I say this with due respect—that the time of this House is being wasted by the discussion here this afternoon. We are merely covering well-trodden ground. What has already happened is merely being constantly rehashed.

I want to confine myself briefly to what the hon. member for East London North has just said. He criticized the hon. the Minister of Finance. What new evidence is there that indicates that the Erasmus Commission’s findings should have been different to what they were with regard to the hon. the Minister of Finance? The finding is very clear, viz. that he did not know what was going on. Surely there is no point in saying now that he signed things he should not have. I want to point out once again to that hon. member and the opposition that we are dealing here with colleagues in a cabinet, with two leaders; the leader of the Transvaal and the leader of Natal. When people have served together in a Government for years and have taken joint decisions for years, I ask any one of the hon. members in the opposition as they are sitting there today with pious faces: Is it not normal to sign a document which your colleague brings to you and says: “This document is in order; sign it?” It is a question of good faith among colleagues. The Minister cannot summarily be charged because he trusted a colleague in the cabinet, and a fellow leader of his party, by signing a document. That is all I want to tell the hon. member for East London North. There is no additional evidence whatsoever that the hon. the Minister of Finance can be implicated and that he knew of the debacle. His bona fides have been proved beyond all doubt I ask the hon. members of the opposition to submit new facts to prove that the Government, from the hon. the Prime Minister down to the most junior member of the cabinet, knew about the information debacle.

Will you sign a blank cheque for me?

I shall put it to you in this way: I have partners in my business who have, on occasions, said to me that a certain transaction has to be registered and whether I would sign the cheque. Does the hon. member want me first to consult my books to see whether the matter has been registered and that all the expenses have been covered? One simply trusts one’s partners. It is a matter of accepting the bona fides of your partners.

*I want to tell the hon. member for Umhlanga that one would simply sign that cheque if that good faith existed between oneself and one’s partner and if you have known one another for years without there having been any reason to mistrust one another. [Interjections.] Hon. members are aware of the circumstances, because evidence has been led in that respect. They were all secret projects and the hon. the Minister was not let in on those secret projects.

I want to dwell briefly on the criticism of our previous Prime Minister, Mr. B. J. Vorster by the hon. member for East London North. What did he do other than what any normal person would have done when he found out by means of a report of the Auditor-General, that certain irregularities had taken place? He immediately had an investigation instituted. He appointed the Reynders Committee, and subsequently the Pretorius Committee, and also requested Genl. Van den Bergh to institute an investigation. Did hon. members on that side of the House expect Mr. B. J. Vorster to react to a lot of loose information he had received?

Yes.

Was it not his duty to see to it that the facts were immediately ascertained by a commission of inquiry? Accordingly, this is what happened. He appointed a commission to determine those facts, he ascertained the facts and acted on them. What leader worthy of the name would react to tales told him without deciding that the matter should first be investigated? The history is familiar—it also came to light in the previous report—viz. that he called all the people to Libertas to discuss the matter with them. What more could be do? The hon. the Leader of the official Opposition must now say whether he would have acted differently. Would he have reacted to things that had reached his ears and condemned certain people on the basis of that information, or would he have had a further investigation instituted? [Interjections.] If he is in any way worthy of the name of leader, he would have had a further investigation instituted. The hon. the Leader of the official Opposition spoke piously about Mr. B. J. Vorster this afternoon. If he is so concerned about him, why did he not do everything possible to solve this Information debacle without South Africa getting the harmful publicity it did in fact get? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition did nothing of the sort. The charge I level at him this afternoon is that the fact that he now all of a sudden wants to take Mr. B. J. Vorster under his wing is a very clear sign to me of the old policy of divide and rule which must prevail in South Africa. They now want to play off Mr. Vorster against our present hon. file Prime Minister, but I want to tell the whole hon. Opposition this afternoon that something of this nature will never happen in South Africa again. The solidarity of the South African is beyond all doubt and the members of the Government stand together and support one another in every respect. There is unity within this Government and we shall not allow a wedge to be driven in between us. I want to give the hon. member that assurance. The NP puts South Africa first and that is why we set the machinery of democracy in motion to expose everything that we could exposed in this Information debacle. Where would one get more comprehensive investigations than those by the various committees and by the Erasmus Commission to date? We shall go further, and this ought to satisfy hon. members on that side of the House, since they wanted this, and say that the evidence will be made available to them after a Select Committee has decided what evidence cannot be published in the interests of State security. Surely this is how democracy really works, and it is this Government, not hon. members on that side of the House, that set it in motion. It is this Government that has allowed them to conduct a brief debate on this matter on 7 and 8 December 1978. It is this Government that once again gives them special permission to discuss this matter this afternoon. Instead of coming forward with something new, however, they simply rehash everything over and over again. [Interjections.]

Let me conclude. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said this afternoon that they wanted to close this case and not reopen it. If so he must demonstrate his love—if he has it—of South Africa and truly close this matter once and for all with his co-operation instead of wanting to expose every little thing in order once again to blacken the name of the Government and, indirectly this country.

Mr. Speaker, haying listened to the hon. member for Aliwal, and having come fairly close to the end of the debate, one gets the impression that it was not a NP Cabinet Minister who was in charge of the defunct Department of Information and that it was not a NP Prime Minister who was in charge of the Government when the Information debacle occurred. All of it is somehow or other the fault of the Opposition, the English-language Press or somebody else, but not the fault of the NP Government. The one thing that every single hon. member of the NP who has spoken this afternoon has sought to escape from—starting with the hon. the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications and going through everyone of the speakers—is the fact that not one of them has been prepared to say that he accepts the findings of this commission. [Interjections.] What is remarkable is that when we had the first and second reports there was a chorus of shouts across the floor to the Opposition asking whether we accepted the reports and the findings. Now, however, there is a remarkably different situation. There is still room for an NP speaker to take part in the debate this afternoon, and I want to ask somebody in authority to say whether they accept the findings or not, specifically to say whether they accept the findings as far as Mr. Vorster is concerned.

It has been a most remarkable debate. The head of a State has fallen, a man who was held in high esteem, not only by the NP, but also by many South Africans outside the NP.

By you as well?

Yes, by me as well. I do not pretend that that is not true. However, despite the fact that that man has fallen, nobody has sought to explain how it is that there was a change from the findings of the first report to those of the last one. What has, in fact, caused the commission to change its mind? What has caused this to take place? [Interjections.] I have read this report and the first report again and again, and I challenge somebody to tell me, other than the statement that Mr. Vorster made to the Press after the Mulder interview, what it was that changed the findings of the first report into those of the last one. The hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, who dealt with this matter in this debate, has an obligation to deal with that Sunday interview with Mr. Vorster in greater detail because he appears to be an intimate of Mr. Vorster. The hon. the Minister was at that interview on that Sunday, so I ask him specifically—and it should be denied and placed on record if it is not so—whether Mr. Vorster asked that the matter of whether he should resign or not be put before a parliamentary committee? Did he ask that? [Interjections.] He says what he wants to say. [Interjections.] I think that if I were sitting on the NP benches and it was my former leader and Prime Minister against whom a finding of this nature had been made—a finding which was, in fact, a reversal of an earlier one—I would, if there was any way out, have liked to give him a chance to appeal in the circumstances.

You are doing what I predicted.

Correct, and I do it for a very simple reason. I seek the same chance for Dr. Mulder, the same chance I would seek for that hon. Minister if he were in trouble. Everybody in South Africa is entitled to have a fair break, to be defended, to cross-examine witnesses and to have representations made. This commission, however, refused to allow cross-examination and to allow representations to be made to it On the contrary, it became arrogant and said there were people who wanted to prescribe to it what it had to do.

Why did you then sign the petition?

Why did I sign the petition? [Interjections.] I shall tell the hon. the Minister why I signed it. I signed it because I know there has to be a Joint Committee of Parliament appointed before any finding can be made. [Interjections.] That hon. Minister knows that as well as I do. However, he has deprived the man of that opportunity. [Interjections.]

We are talking now about the right of representation, but we had the commission attacking the official Opposition for allegedly hindering it in its work. However, I am in possession of the documentation in connection with what was presented. All that we asked for when we first appeared before the commission was for the right to be present and to ask questions. Our request, however, was turned down. We asked then to be allowed to be present, but that was also turned down. We made representations, which are available in writing. At least I assume that they were noted down. We made representations, and I shall quote two of those representations which have, in point of fact, been implemented. I say this because what we actually said was the following—

Is that hindering the commission? We went on and made submissions to the commission in regard to the conduct of its affairs. When hon. members talk about hindering the commission, I believe they should take note of the answers to those representations, because there was a switch, from the first report to the third one, on this issue as well. I have here a letter written to me by the secretary of the Erasmus Commission. It is a letter dated 13 November 1978. What does it say? I shall quote it in full so that there can be no suggestion that I am leaving anything out—

We wanted the evidence to be heard in public, except for matters of national security, and—

And now I want hon. members to listen very carefully—

Here he said that it was most helpful. However, then the commission has the impertinence to switch around in the third report and say it was obstructionist. [Interjections.] What do hon. members say to that? [Interjections.] Let me take another example of the findings of the commission. The hon. member for Simonstown waxed lyrical about To The Point. He thinks it is like The Citizen.

Both are very good publications.

All right, but let me give the hon. member an example of the very thing about which he complained. I have selected a random passage from To The Point because it is interesting and because I thought the hon. member might be saying something about that. I quote—

That is what was said by this so-called non-party publication which ostensibly does not interfere in politics in South Africa. This is the publication which the commission refers to as being neutral and acting so beautifully in the interests of South Africa. [Interjections.]

However, let us take another passage from To The Point, a passage which deals with a hitherto unanswered question. Perhaps the hon. the Minister, or some other hon. Minister, will enlighten us on this matter. This deals with the evidence given when a newspaper was prosecuted. The newspaper to which I am referring now is Rapport. The evidence given was—

That evidence was given. There was evidence given on oath that there was no connection between the department and To The Point. Rapport was convicted, the Sunday Express was convicted and Beeld was convicted, and who, sitting in that Cabinet now, knew that there was a miscarriage of justice? [Interjections.] Who will get up, as volunteers, be honest about it and say that they knew and are prepared to admit it? There is silence because they allowed a miscarriage of justice to be perpetrated in regard to three newspapers in South Africa, and it cannot be said that it was not a miscarriage of justice because the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs has asked for the sentences to be repealed, and they have been repealed.

All these things have happened. There are all these questions that have not been answered. There are so many unanswered questions about this Department of Information issue, but they all say that we must bring the matter to an end. Certainly, we want to bring it to an end, and there is a way of bringing it to an end. Let us appoint a Select Committee of this Parliament to deal with all the outstanding issues and to get them out of the way. Let us also go into the question—and I challenge them to do so—of why there has been this dramatic switch from the first report to the third report in regard to the former State President I issue that challenge because that is the way of disposing of the issue. There are many unanswered questions.

Let us take the point that the hon. member for East London North made. We were told in this House that the evidence given by the hon. the Minister of Finance on To The Point was incorrect, and he said that he had gone to correct it. Where is the reference in this report to that correction? Where is the new story in the report? There is not a mention made of it. Where is there any reference to any cross-examination of the hon. the Minister, or any examination of him or chat with him about his having covered up before he signed? The hon. member for Aliwal says he will sign anything that his partners give him. Is it customary, in his business, for his partners to cover up the amount when he is given a cheque to sign so that he cannot see what he is signing? [Interjections.] The whole thing is so ludicrous. There are so many unanswered questions.

This is fraud.

Perhaps the hon. the Minister who has spoken, or perhaps the next speaker, will tell us why there was no determination about what portions of the secret accounts should be audited, because if they were audited, that would have been dealt with. Why was that not done?

Do hon. members want something new? I shall tell them something else that is new. I shall quote to them from a letter from the Auditor-General.

What about the evidence before the commission?

I shall come to the evidence before the commission. In May 1978 I specifically asked—

What do hon. members think was the answer? I quote—

Yet not only did the then Prime Minister do it, but the hon. present Prime Minister also knew about it, as did the hon. the Minister of Finance. Those are facts and realities that we cannot escape from. Where does all this get us?

A challenge was made about our giving evidence. The facts speak for themselves. On the very first occasion the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, the hon. member for Parktown and I were there. I told the members of the commission that they could question me there and then or at any other time, but they said they did not think that would be necessary, although I told them what I knew about the matter. I told them, in fact, of my discussions with Gen. Van den Bergh and told them they could question me about that if they wished to. They did not, however, want to. So to come now with these hollow challenges about our not wanting to give evidence is nonsense, a typical political tactic that we expect from a Government that is drunk with power because it has an overwhelming majority and thinks it can change the facts by votes in this House. [Interjections.] However, one cannot change facts by majorities. Facts speak for themselves and cannot be changed by majorities in this House. [Interjections.] Let us look at where we are.

What, in fact, have these three reports shown? They have firstly shown maladministration of a magnitude unknown in the history of South Africa.

You have said that six times already.

Nobody will challenge that, not even that loud-mouthed member sitting over there. Secondly, the system of government that has hitherto existed in South Africa has insufficient built-in safeguards to ensure that such abuse does not occur. There is no doubt that there were inadequate checks and balances in the structure of government in South Africa. That has to be remedied. It has to be remedied not by passing a law to stop the Press from publishing, but by passing laws which enforce a strict financial control in the Republic of South Africa. Thirdly, it was demonstrated that a small cabal of men can exercise tremendous power and influence people even though we have a so-called democratic structure in this Parliament and even though there are in fact democratic structures which are supposed to control this situation. That is the simple situation.

What is being done to ensure that a small cabal cannot rule the country once again? What is being done inside the caucus of the party opposite to ensure that the same situation does not develop again? [Interjections.] What are they doing about it?

They have stopped caring.

There is another matter the commission draws attention to. It draws attention to the fact that individuals or small groups of individuals can acquire such an intimate knowledge of a country’s most intimate secrets that they can, by threats to expose those secrets, create embarrassment for the country they profess to serve. I want to ask any one of the hon. members opposite who is still going to take part in this debate to tell us what steps are being taken to make sure that there will never again be a man who can have the kind of knowledge Rhoodie had, knowledge which can cause a Prime Minister to say: “He holds the future of the members of the Cabinet in the palm of his hand.” What steps are being taken to avoid that? That is what we want to hear, because we do not believe that anybody should possess the kind of knowledge with which he can hold the whole country to ransom.

What Ministers did he refer to?

Let me also make the point—and I think it is important that we should not forget it—that all the major abuses of power and major irregularities which took place were not voluntarily exposed, but were exposed largely as a result of the Press and its investigative journalism and as a result of the probing and watchfulness of the Opposition. I challenge the speaker who follows after me, to give one example of an irregularity of a major nature which was brought forward voluntarily as a result of the Government saying: Mea culpa, here we have done wrong; this is what has taken place. In every case either the Press or the Opposition had to say: That is what is wrong. It was called a rumour. The hon. the Prime Minister would keep on interjecting across the floor that we are rumourmongers. I challenge him and I challenge the NP to say which of the rumours that are supposed to have been spread by us turned out to be realities and the truth. I challenge them to give us examples.

There are other facts we must take into account. It does not help for hon. members on that side of the House to say that we now have a different Prime Minister. What has to be remembered is that all this took place under NP rule. It was under a NP Government and the NP has to take responsibility for this situation. [Interjections.] We have been told there is a new Cabinet Like a pack of cards, it has been reshuffled and a few cards are missing, but it is the same pack of cards. All that has happened now is that Mr. P. W. Botha is now trumps …

And you are the missing link.

… and the former Prime Minister is gone. That is all that has happened with that pack of cards. For the rest there is no difference.

I want some member on that side to answer two simple questions. Firstly, does an act of the Leader of the NP not bind the NP any more after the events have occurred; or did the acts of the then Leader of the NP not bind the National Party? I want to ask the Senior Cabinet Ministers who are in the Chamber whether the act of the present Prime Minister does not bind the Cabinet and the caucus? Did the previous Prime Minister’s act not bind the Cabinet and the caucus? I think those questions need to be answered if one does not want to avoid the concept of responsibility altogether.

I, however, think there is another matter which is very real and which we must draw attention to. Everybody agrees—and every NP speaker as well as the hon. member for Simonstown have spoken about it—that South Africa is in a crucial period of its history, and the major charge which I have against the NP is that at this crucial time in the history of South Africa it has failed South Africa. It has failed South Africa because it has failed to provide strong and reliable leadership. How can we afford, when we are in this kind of peril, to have our previous Prime Minister, who became State President, resign in circumstances such as these? Furthermore, I charge the Government with having failed to instil confidence in the people when threats to the Republic require confidence in the Government One needs to have people believe in one, but the Government has not made this possible. Another charge is that the Government has failed to ensure respect for the structures and machinery of Government, such respect, I believe, being essential for sound Government in South Africa. Those are the charges I bring against the Government.

I briefly want to refer to the Erasmus Commission’s report again. I want to …

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member whether they are going to put up a candidate in the Koedoespoort constituency? [Interjections.]

I am pleased that I afforded the hon. the Minister the opportunity of asking that question, because he actually thinks that one can change irregularities and wrong things in South Africa by votes. One cannot, however, do that. The Government can win the election, but the difficulty is that it is South Africa that is suffering. [Interjections.]

I want to tell hon. members of the NP that the Erasmus Commission report does not give the assurance that all the matters which should have been investigated have, in fact, been investigated. The report states on page 10 that there are many things that it did not investigate but that it did not have anybody coming to complain about it. There are many things which have not been investigated, matters which I believe should be investigated.

The second question raised by this report—and I am pleased to see on the Order Paper that there is a measure which may perhaps remedy this—is whether the public is satisfied that the individuals who are affected by the findings of the commission have had the opportunities which would normally be available to them in a court of law. I believe that when a politician is tried by a commission, the judgment is unfortunately as effective as if it had been given by a court of law. This has very clearly been demonstrated by this commission.

I want to raise another point Can we, in fact, accept the findings as being final, and can they be regarded as having established the truth, particularly in view of the change, from the first to the third report, in regard to one of the major figures in the whole affair? Can we therefore actually say that the matter has reached finality? I heard the judge say on the radio a little while ago that, as an Appeal Court judge, he cannot change his opinions like he changes his shirts. There was, however, a major change of opinion, and a question therefore needs to be asked. If there is a further inquiry, which gives rise to a fourth report, would there not be another reversal of some of the findings that were so strongly defended by hon. members on the other side of the House when we debated this matter on previous occasions?

I want to raise a further matter, which may perhaps be a delicate one. However, I make no excuse for raising it. The report has raised some questions in regard to issues pertaining to private disputes and personal relationships, issues whose connection with irregularities in the former Department of Information seems to me, at least, to be somewhat remote. I want to ask why those issues were raised. Why is it necessary to raise that kind of issue in this kind of report, because the judgment of the people is based on this report and newspapers publish what they regard as salacious details and play the matter up in a manner which I do not believe has anything to do with irregularities in the former Department of Information.

I have dealt with the matter of the hindrance to the work of the Commission. I want to point out that it is the basic right of every individual, whether he be a member of Parliament or a man in the street, to be able to go to a commission and to request a hearing. He may be wrong in what he says, but that is a basic democratic right of every individual in South Africa and he should not be condemned if he seeks to exercise that right.

Mr. Speaker, in the first place I cannot help drawing two conclusions after the speech by the hon. member for Yeoville. I want to give the assurance that I am most definitely not going to become excited today because I now have to participate in this debate after the hon. member. I could not but come to the conclusion that the hon. member is not satisfied with the NP Government. The first conclusion I draw, is that the hon. member does not like the Government. [Interjections.] The second conclusion I draw—I do not believe it is an unjustified conclusion—is that the hon. member does not like the reports of the Erasmus Commission either. These are two very important conclusions and I mention them at this stage in lighter vein. In the course of my speech I should like to come back to them.

If I remember correctly, the hon. member asked 72 questions in the course of his speech.

Only answer one of them and we shall immediately feel happier.

The hon. member asked 28 of the 72 questions in the Select Committee on Public Accounts that dealt with the whole situation on the basis of the replies from the Treasury, and when we had the Public Service Commission and the present Director of the Information Service of South Africa before us. He asked how the problems in the work of the former Department of Information had been ironed out and what procedure was being followed to avoid that type of irregularity. The replies are contained in the report of the Select Committee on Public Accounts; why should we repeat them today in the course of this debate? I want to concede to the hon. member that he asked the questions effectively. Surely this type of window dressing and politics is to no avail as far as this matter is concerned. The replies are there in black and white in the Select Committee’s report.

Oh please, that is untrue. You know it is not true.

I spoke about 28 of the questions; I shall come to the other questions.

Just start with No. 1, Hennie.

I want to concede at once that if I had had to write a report, I would probably not have used the type of language and words used by Mr. Justice Erasmus either. Reference has been made to certain words and one could possibly differ on the choice of words. The commission appointed is a judicial commission and we cannot supply the hon. member with a reply to the question why the judge changed his opinion concerning certain matters. We were not there and we did not have the evidence before us; therefore, how can it be expected of this side of the House to supply such replies to the hon. member? That is a question which will have to be asked of the judge himself. Surely this matter cannot be argued in such a way. We were not present; we are not the judge and we do not know what is contained in the evidence. Surely it is unreasonable to ask a question of that nature of hon. members in this House and then in addition to expect us to have to reply to it. We shall only be able to do so— I hesitate to say this—if the hon. member wants to indicate by that question that this side of the House and the hon. the Prime Minister interfered with the work of the commission. I believe that is what such a question implies. There are hon. members opposite who know quite enough of the law to be able to realize that we cannot interfere. After all, we do not know what the judge felt when he changed his mind. We did not see the evidence. The hon. members are unhappy, but I cannot understand why they are unhappy, because after the publication of the first report of the commission there were cries of “Vorster must go, Connie must go!” Meanwhile, both have gone. In the third report the judge changed his opinion in a certain respect. Those hon. members are unhappy about that. There is another aspect I want to deal with. They said that the judge was not entitled to change his opinion. On three successive occasions the judge found that there was nothing on the basis of which he could find against the hon. the Minister of Finance. I should like to dwell on this and quote from page 74 of the first report. We do not know what evidence was led before that judge and consequently we cannot assess it.

We are trying to obtain it for you.

The report states very clearly in paragraph 10.341 on page 74—

The second report, from which I do not want to quote now, deals with the involvement of Ministers in the whole affair. It contains exactly the same findings as the first report I have not seen the documents submitted by hon. members to the Erasmus Commission, nor do I intend to quote the Erasmus Commission’s findings with regard to those documents. Hon. members know what is contained therein. However, I am convinced—the hon. member for Yeoville can just give me an indication whether I am right or wrong, because it could influence my argument— that the misgivings that hon. members on that side of the House have or had on the role played by the hon. the Minister of Finance, are aired in those documents submitted to the Erasmus Commission.

[Inaudible.]

Thank you very much. The hon. member for Yeoville confirms this. I want to quote from paragraph 13.31 under the subheading “general finding” on page 53 of the supplementary report of the Erasmus Commission, a paragraph that hon. members were apt to quote today. I quote—

The commission found that it could not make any decision on this. I think it is a great pity that hon. members of the official Opposition—I am speaking now specifically of the official Opposition; I do not really want to speak of those other parties as Opposition parties—are continuing to implicate the hon. the Minister of Finance.

He implicated himself.

Will one of those hon. members on that side of the House stand up and tell me why they are doing so? The judicial commission exonerated the hon. the Minister three times in a row.

Wait for the fourth time.

I ask the hon. member for Bryanston to allow me to talk to people who understand these things. The South African economy must be strong to enable us to manage our affairs in this country properly. We are saddled with a world oil crisis that is making matters very difficult for South Africa financially. What are hon. members of the Opposition doing now? I can indicate that people of high status in the economy of South Africa and outside South Africa as well have a great deal of appreciation for the work done by the hon. the Minister of Finance. I could, for example, quote what a director of Hill Samuel said. There are people such as Dr. Anton Rupert and other businessmen in South Africa who have made no bones about taking the part of the Minister of Finance and saying: Keep your hands off this man. An overseas director of Hill Samuel said with regard to the Information affair and the role of the political parties in it—

If a person can say this in the business world today, I do not want to attempt to score minor political points. If it were not for the political gossip doing the rounds in connection with Senator Horwood, a person such as Mr. Harry Oppenheimer could have stood up and could have stopped the whole thing with regard to Senator Horwood there and then. Would hon. members deny this? [Interjections.] Even the powerful Mr. Oppenheimer, for the sake of petty party-political gain, had to …

Where do you get that from?

The hon. member would do well to look at The Star of 5 June 1979. Surely this is true. For the sake of petty politics those hon. members have even prevented a person such as Mr. Harry Oppenheimer from supporting Senator Horwood, something which every other businessman in South Africa would have liked to see. [Interjections.] Hon. members can laugh about that, but it is tremendously important for South Africa that we face these facts if hon. members of the Opposition want to continue to play this type of game with the hon. the Minister of Finance.

Finally I want to say—and I am very serious when I say this—that we must get the Information situation behind us. We in South Africa should remember that in fact we have only managed our own Information service for just over 20 years. Consequently we are relatively new in that field, a field in which we have to deal with secret services. Today we no longer have the sources we had in former years that we could use for this type of thing. We are relatively young and we have made mistakes. This side of the House admits that we have made mistakes, but while we in our youth have made mistakes, let us learn from them how to set to work in future so as not to repeat the same mistake. And let us not condemn too strongly when we are dealing with a young structure such as this if there are individuals who have damaged South Africa. Let us not seek to shatter the whole system and do South Africa further harm in the process. We must learn from this and indeed we have gained knowledge from it. As far as I am concerned, we can now proceed to use properly the information we have gained, if all of us on both sides of this House have the honest desire to be rid of the Information scandal and to give this young service which is necessary for South Africa, a chance to live.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down attempted—very weakly, I thought—to jump to the defence of the hon. the Minister of Finance. I do not think he attempted to explain to us how it could possibly be that a member of the Cabinet could sign a document … [Interjections.] The hon. member has spent about five minutes explaining to us what a marvellous Minister of Finance the hon. Senator is and how people overseas think marvellous things about him. He quoted Hill Samuel and others with reference to the Minister, but he did not explain to us— and nobody can explain it to us, because nobody can understand it—how a Minister in that responsible position can sign a document like that without trying to find out what it is all about, getting himself informed and understanding what his ultimate responsibility in the matter is. That hon. member made no attempt whatsoever to try to explain that to the House. He also made no attempt whatsoever to answer the question asked by this side of the House whether he accepts the findings of the commission that have just been tabled. Does the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke accept the findings of the commission that has just been tabled? [Interjections.] I have asked him a question, and he need merely nod his head, wink his eye, lift his eyebrow or say yes to indicate that he accepts the findings of the commission. I shall give the hon. member another chance to tell me whether he accepts the findings of the commission or not.

The hon. the Prime Minister spelled out here … [Interjections.]

Ask “Pik”.

Yes, let us ask the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is so quick to ask questions and to throw things across the floor of the House. Does the hon. the Minister accept the findings of the commission?

Can I lift my eyebrow?

The hon. the Minister can lift his eyebrow, wink his eye, twitch his ear or even wag his tail if he wants to. I do not mind what he does as long as he tells us whether he accepts the findings of the commission or not.

Why?

“Why”?

The hon. member for Aliwal told us here with great gesticulation that it was the NP that was so patriotic as to allow debates of this nature to be conducted here in the House. However, it is not the NP that is granting us that right, but the parliamentary system itself. We owe no thanks to the NP, but to Parliament, which recognizes our right as the Opposition to debate that matter. We can do so at any time and we are not indebted to the NP at all for that privilege.

†Mr. Speaker, I would like to try to approach the situation we face from a different angle. If it is possible to find any kind of new angle in this situation, I want to try to supply it. I want to take a look at the whole matter in hind-sight. We have had all the occurrences, we have got the report—and it is a supplementary report; it is not listed as the final report. The commission is now going to disband, however, and we assume that that is going to be the end of the story in so far as reports of the commission are concerned. If ever there was a saga of commission reports, then the reports of this commission are a saga all by themselves, because there have been changes and adaptations to them all along the line.

I want to say to hon. members and to that hon. the Minister who is now in charge of the operation which is to be launched or to be continued in the interests of South Africa, that there was built up a formidable organization by the previous Minister of Information and by the previous Secretary of Information and that anybody who has had any sort of insight into what goes on in this organization, cannot fail to be impressed by the formidable array of interlocking organizations, companies, etc. that have been set up. Is the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs not impressed?

I do not think “formidable” is the correct word.

Well, if it was not formidable, he has been wasting his time. I am attempting to give the Secretary credit for having built up something which I regard as having the potential to develop into a formidable weapon for South Africa in fighting the struggle against our enemies overseas. If the hon. the Minister himself has no confidence in it, that is a matter for his conscience and it is his problem, not mine. I believe it was something that could well have developed into a formidable operation.

If one takes a historian’s point of view in looking at what happened and one tries to identify motives and the causes of things, I want to ask just one question: What happened within the inside councils of the NP or within the inside councils of the former Department of Information, or between the hon. the Minister, Gen. Van den Bergh and others which led to the decision that in the operations and the funding of that department, funding by the State, the emphasis should be shifted from the activities outside South Africa to activities inside South Africa in an attempt to play the party-political game of the NP here in our midst? That is a question that nobody has yet attempted to answer. What was it, why did it happen and what was in the minds of those people—and they were exceedingly powerful people—that decided them to do that once they had got the structure and funding going and had established that they were not to be held responsible by any single person in that Cabinet because the hon. the Minister of Finance signed documents without looking to see what they were and the ex-hon. Minister of Defence funnelled the money to them and did not know what it was for?

He objected.

He objected because he did not like the way in which it was done, because somebody was doing something with money for which he was responsible and he did not know, or did he? The hon. the Minister says he objected, but why did he object? He objected because he did not like the operation.

It was just the procedure.

Yes, he did not like the procedure. What was the excuse for it? We were given the excuse by Dr. Mulder. The excuse was that it was necessary to have a patriotic English-language newspaper in South Africa, because by definition all Afrikaans-language newspapers are, of course, patriotic.

Especially Die Afrikaner.

It was therefore necessary to have a patriotic English-language newspaper so that the world outside could read true reports about the Government’s policies which would then be peddled abroad and tattled about by all the organizations that had been set up by the previous Minister. All these companies, the Washington Post and all such organs that were acquired would then have, as a reliable source of information, an English-language newspaper which could issue reliable reports. However, what happened was that that newspaper became nothing more than a party political broadsheet, wittingly and willingly. I say deliberately that what had happened to that patriotic attempt…

It attacked me severely.

Because it was on Connie’s side.

The hon. the Minister must understand that when he gets caught up in the internal struggles in that party he must expect to be attacked by his own side. It is not yet finished either because he is still going to get a lot more. [Interjections.] That story will not go away. [Interjections.]

Look behind you, Pik.

This attempt to set up a patriotic newspaper did not work. It failed because the newspaper became nothing more than a party political broadsheet People have been talking about corruption and the misappropriation of funds, but I want to tell that hon. Minister that the previous Minister of Information and his associates launched what can only be described as an attack on the minds of English-speaking South Africans. It was a conspiracy to subvert the minds of the English-speaking South Africans who, from 1948, have formed a base of opposition to the NP, to bring them around to a point of view reinforced by the television service, the SABC and the Afrikaans-language Press. That group of people decided that an English-language newspaper was necessary in order to subvert the minds of English-speaking South Africans into a situation where they would automatically …

I do not believe that English-speaking South Africans can be subverted that easily.

I do not think so either. However, that was the purpose, the goal established by those people. [Interjections.] I think that is far more serious than corruption.

You will not fool them again, Pik.

I think that we really should understand that the corruption was incidental. Because there was no attempt to check the expenditure of the money, immense sums were fiddled around and handed about from one person to another, appearing in all kinds of odd company accounts all over the place, with nobody knowing where it was going to. In a situation like that, it is inevitable that part of it would get into the wrong pockets. It cannot but happen. Basically it was a deliberate attempt by hon. members of the NP, or shall I say one member, the previous Minister of Information. One must, however, ask oneself whether there was any complicity on the part of, or knowledge in the mind of, the previous Prime Minister when these activities were taking place.

I want to refer now to Gen. Van den Bergh, who said he had discussed the matter with the previous Prime Minister and added that there had been some discussion about a newspaper being acquired, or something of that nature. The previous Prime Minister told him to have nothing to do with it but to keep his ear to the ground. Now, I would imagine that when a newspaper suddenly appears on the streets or is launched—and The Citizen was launched through a normally non-newspaper channel, Mr. Louis Luyt—a newspaper which just suddenly happens to be wholeheartedly in support of the Government and everything done by the Government, somebody would surely have suggested to the previous Prime Minister that there might just possibly be a connection between the newspaper that Gen. Van den Bergh had been talking about and the one that had suddenly blossomed forth, full-blown like Venus from the head of Jove, The Citizen in full operation! [Interjections.]

Immaculate conception.

I must say that I believe Dr. Mulder, who claims that he was justified in the manner in which he spent the money and claims that he had acted in terms of his mandate. I think that if the hon. the Minister has a really good look at the steps that were taken he will find that Dr. Mulder’s claim was, in fact, justified because he was spending money in terms of a mandate given to him by the previous Prime Minister, spending it without any control because nobody, at any stage during the whole operation, asked him why he was doing this or that or on what the money was being spent I believe there is a lot more in this situation than meets the eye. Although this report is said to be the final report, I do not believe it is the end of the story at all. I believe Dr. Mulder is going to make a full-out effort to justify himself in terms of the facts I have just mentioned, the mandate that was given to him and the money that was made available to him. He will maintain in public—and he will fight the case—that he was only acting within the limits of his mandate.

I want to add one more thing. A previous hon. member of this House, Mr. Douglas Mitchell, told us many times that if one is to embark upon a political assassination, one should make sure it is successful. I believe that what the NP tried to do was to establish an English newspaper with a deliberate purpose, and when I refer to the NP I am referring specifically to the previous Minister of Information. He tried to establish that newspaper in a deliberate attempt to subvert the minds of English-speaking South Africans. However, the problem the NP had with the previous Minister of Information was that The Citizen was not a success. [Interjections.] I want to ask hon. members opposite what they would be saying now if The Citizen had been a full-blown success. If they started off and got the thing going, and everybody advertised that The Citizen was the “in” thing, that it was the modern thing in the newspaper world in Johannesburg and was selling like hot cakes, where would Dr. Mulder be sitting now? [Interjections.] He would be sitting right there where the hon. the Prime Minister is sitting now. [Interjections.] He would be sitting there because he would have been the hero of hon. members opposite, having succeeded in penetrating and breaking into the minds of English-speaking South Africans in a way those members opposite have been trying to do it throughout the 31 years they have been sitting in those benches, but have failed in their attempts. [Interjections.] The hon. the Deputy Minister of Plural Relations and of Education and Training would be clapping his hands with all the other hon. members opposite and saying it was a very good trick they had been played on the English speakers in South Africa by taking their money and starting up a newspaper, their own money being used to win the game against them! [Interjections.] That, I believe, is probably the ultimate epithet to the whole of this episode. Had The Citizen succeeded there would have been a totally different situation in South Africa today.

When the hon. members opposite talk to us about patriotism, and when words are flung backwards and forwards across the floor of the House about who is patriotic and who not, my question to hon. members opposite … [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

I ask that loud-mouthed hon. member for Waterkloof whether he regards this as a patriotic action embarked upon by the previous Minister of Information. Does he regard what has happened as the actions of patriotic people, actions that have brought our country into the disrepute in which it has now landed, with all the ignominy involved and with even the State President having had to leave office as a result.

Does he regard that as being the action of a patriotic South African? [Interjections.] Sir, I want the hon. member to reply to that question. Can I ask him to use his sense of humour and to reply merely yes or no? Does he regard that to be the action of a patriotic person, a member of the party, a Cabinet Minister, the provincial leader of the party and an aspirant Prime Minister? Does he regard that as being a patriotic action on the part of that person?

[Inaudible.]

Does that hon. member at the back, the hon. member for Waterkloof, say “yes” or “no”?

He cannot answer.

What has happened is a deliberate attempt which I regard as being unpatriotic and un-South African. Those words will stick on the NP as a result of what has happened in the whole of this debaze, the whole of this saga. It is a deliberately engineered attempt which went wrong. How on earth a previous Minister got himself associated with the people who gave him advice, I do not know. He certainly did not know how to pick his friends; he did pick his enemies all right, that’s for sure.

The word “patriotism” is from now on something which that party will have to handle with very, very great care. I quoted this in the debate during the special session and I am going to quote again what Dr. Samuel Johnson said about patriotism. He said that patriotism, in the minds of noble men, is a noble and uplifting thing, but that patriotism in the minds of ignoble men, is the last resort of the scoundrel. I want to say that hon. members on that side must not chuck the word “patriotism” across the floor of this House as though it is the defence of everything they might do or the defence against any attack that we might make against them. That word is something to which they cannot lay claim as a result of what has happened.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Mooi River said that he could not understand the argument of the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke. With due respect I want to suggest that the reason why the hon. member for Mooi River could not understand the argument, lies in the fact that he does not have his sticks and little balls here this evening. Apparently he only understands when he can demonstrate with his sticks and balls.

Keep on talking; I appreciate the publicity.

The hon. member also tried to play the part of a political vulture by hurling questions over the floor of the House in an attempt to score political points. Before the hon. member has a right to ask us whether or not we accept the report of the Erasmus Commission, he must first tell us whether he accepts it [Interjections.] After all, the basis of all reasonable argumentation is that one must first state one’s standpoint before attempting to score political points off the other party. [Interjections.] The hon. members can go ahead and shout; they will not shout me down.

I want to come back to what the hon. member for Parktown said earlier. He made wild statements about the unlawful transfer of funds and about committing an unlawful act I want to state that the statements he made were reprehensible, unfounded and extremely irresponsible. The hon. member for East London North then quoted an example which he tried to make applicable, viz. where two or more persons conspire to commit an offence, one of them cannot say that because he warned his accomplices he is innocent of the crime. However, we are not now concerned with the committing of offences. The example quoted by the hon. member for East London North, was therefore quoted by him deliberately in order to insinuate that there was criminality on the part of the hon. the Prime Minister. I say that the hon. member’s conduct was reprehensible. [Interjections.]

Let us confine ourselves for a moment to what really happened, insofar as the hon. the Prime Minister was involved in this. After it was decided in 1972 that the Department of Information should undertake sensitive secret projects, no applicable legislative measures were in fact taken to make specific provision for the appropriation of funds for those proposed activities. Initially funds were made available by way of a contribution through the Special Account for Security Services which was provided for by Act No. 81 of 1969.

That was improper too.

The hon. member says that was improper too. That is absolute nonsense, because section 2 of Act No. 81 of 1969 provides expressly that funds may be utilized legally for services of a confidential nature, as well as for expenditure incurred by the Bureau for State Security as it was then known. It is typical of hon. members opposite to make wild allegations irrespective of whether they have any grounds for doing so.

In this way an amount of R793 000 was made available to the Department of Information during the 1973-’74 financial year. From the 1974-’75 financial year, however, appropriations for the Department of Information’s secret projects were done by way of the Special Defence Account. The Special Defence Account did not simply appear from nowhere either. It was introduced by legislation of this Parliament, viz. Act No. 6 of 1974. Section 2 of Act No. 6 of 1974 provides, inter alia, the following—

I do not want to maintain that this provision authorizes the transference of money from the Department of Defence to another department However, to say that the transfer of funds was not authorized, is one thing, but to attribute criminality to the transfer of such funds, is something else altogether.

Illegal.

Hon. members who have no notion of the law must not shout “illegal”. The hon. member for East London North expressly used the example of criminals and accomplices who commit a crime together.

[Inaudible.]

It has nothing to do with illegality and if that hon. member does not know that, then he does not belong in any Bar.

The former Prime Minister assumed full responsibility for this method of funding of the secret funds of the Department of Information. In this regard I refer, inter alia, to—paragraph 10.316 on page 69 of the Erasmus Commission report—owing to a shortage of time I cannot quote it—where it is set out very clearly. During the 1974-’75 financial year a sum of R12,5 million, during the 1975-’76 financial year an initial sum of R15 million and subsequently a further R919 494, were included under the Special Defence Account for the Department of Information’s secret projects.

The important fact is that the present hon. Prime Minister, who was at that stage the Minister of Defence, objected from the outset in the very strongest terms to this procedure because he did not regard it as the proper and correct procedure. The hon. the Prime Minister explained his approach and his actions in this regard very clearly in this House on 8 December 1978. In this regard I refer to Hansard, 7 December 1978, column 15 and Hansard, 8 December 1978, column 505. The statements of the hon. the Prime Minister are indeed fully substantiated by available documentary proof. If there is any hon. member here who wants to question that the hon. the Prime Minister did indeed object to this procedure in the strongest possible way, I challenge him to stand up and question it, but I predict that his ears will be red when the evidence led before the Erasmus Commission by, inter alia, the hon. the Prime Minister himself, is published. The Erasmus Commission did indeed also find that the hon. the Prime Minister consistently objected in the strongest terms to this method of funding the Department of Information’s secret projects. In this regard I refer to paragraph 10.314 on page 69 of the first report and to paragraph 13.20 on page 52 of the supplementary report.

What was the result of the objection by the hon. the Prime Minister to this procedure? The result was that the hon. the Prime Minister, as the Minister of Defence, received certain very important assurances. The first assurance was that the amount appropriated for the secret projects of the Department of Information would be added separately to the Special Defence Account and would indeed have nothing to do with the budget for defence purposes. It would not be taken into account in any way as defence expenditure by the Treasury or the Cabinet. The amount in question would be added to the Special Defence Account purely for transfer purposes. This was in fact what was done in practice.

I should like to refer to a report which appeared in this regard in Sunday’s edition of the Sunday Express, a report which shows very clearly what total ignorance and confusion prevails in this regard, but time does not allow me to do so.

The second assurance received by the hon. the Minister of Defence, was that the Secretary for Information would indeed be the accounting officer in respect of the amount in question and as such would be accountable for its utilization. Moreover the Secretary for Information confirmed his accountability in this regard by furnishing a certificate regularly every year to the effect that (a) the funds in question had been properly spent, (b) the funds had been utilized for the purpose for which they were appropriated and (c) all funds had been spent. After all, it could not be expected that the Head of the S.A. Defence Force should assume responsibility for the spending of funds over which he had no control. Consequently no audit of these special additional funds was carried out by the Defence Force’s auditors of the Special Defence Account of the Defence Force, except to ensure that the required certificate had been obtained from the Secretary for Information. Nor did the Department of Defence create a formal clearance procedure since only those moneys appropriated for a specific project were paid over as required. All this attests to the fact that these amounts placed on the Special Defence Account indeed did not form part of the Defence Budget. Nor is there any indication whatsoever of irregularity in the payment procedures, and I challenge any hon. member to prove the contrary.

As far as the clearing of funds in the Special Defence Account for the purposes of secret. Information projects are concerned, this was disposed of once the funds were transferred. As far as the Department of Defence is concerned, the spending of funds for these projects ended on payment of the approved funds. Surely it cannot be expected of the Department of Defence to monitor another department’s control measures. The Secretary of Information did, after all, officially assure the Department of Defence that a special accountant had been appointed to the Department of Information whose task it would be to carry out the necessary internal audit and to control the payments and transfers. Furthermore there are various pronouncements by the Treasury to the effect that where transfers from one department to another take place, accountability is transferred to the executive department and the original department merely has to furnish proof that the amount was in fact transferred. Consequently the Department of Defence simply had to rely on the certificate of the Secretary of Information in this regard.

The hon. members of the Opposition have no idea of government.

Hear, hear!

They have never been in government, nor will they ever govern.

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

I do not have time. The fact of the matter is that if there is not mutual trust among Cabinet colleagues nor mutual trust between departments, no Government can function. The fact that it has come to light that there have been irregularities in the spending of the funds in question in the former Department of Information, cannot be used to question the bona fides of the Minister of Defence and his department ex post facto. The certificate of the Minister of Defence was not intended as a personal authorization by the Minister, but merely as confirmation that the internal auditor had carried out a proper audit in respect of the clearance and proper spending within the S.A. Defence Force.

Mr. Speaker, apparently the time has expired and consequently I move—

Agreed to.

Business suspended at 18h30 and resumed at 20h00.

Evening Sitting

Mr. Chairman, as I have indicated at the Second Reading stage, we on this side of the House have no problems with regard to the idea behind this legislation. We have no problems with the fact that this legislation seeks to apply a system to Whites, Coloureds and Indians which has in fact applied to Blacks since 1976. We have also indicated that we are in favour of what the legislation seeks to do.

What we do regret and find unacceptable, however, is that it should take place by way of duplication of legislation. We believe that it would have been just as easy to make provision for all races to administered under the same legislation, the control of which could fall under the Department of Labour. As a matter of fact, the hon. the Minister obviously envisages such a situation, because he indicated it towards the end of his Second Reading speech. He said that if the Government should accept the Riekert Commission’s recommendation that control over Black in-service training should also fall under the Department of Labour, it would entail that existing legislation and the legislation now before the House could be consolidated. We know this will happen and for that reason we simply cannot understand why there should be this duplication of legislation at this stage. We cannot understand the reason for the delay in the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Riekert Commission. Those are the aspects we are objecting to, because we believe that this legislation is definitely a rejection of the Riekert Commission’s clear recommendations, and we deplore it.

I just want to add that a request for the Third Reading stage to be taken immediately after the Committee Stage has been made to us. We have no objection to it since we realize that there are certain benefits arising from the legislation, benefits which should come into effect as soon as possible.

Is that why you opposed the legislation?

Is that why you voted against the Second Reading of the legislation?

Mr. Chairman, in my speech during the Second Reading stage I asked the hon. the Minister for further elaboration on a certain part of his speech, i.e. that part which deals with his intentions for the amalgamation of the in-service training schemes as in terms of the 1976 Act vis-à-vis the present amendment Bill. Unfortunately the hon. the Minister did not have time at that stage to confirm that it is the intention of his department to consolidate these two pieces of legislation into one. But on the basis of the recommendations of the Riekert Commission the hon. the Minister does agree with us in principle that these two measures should be consolidated under the control of his department I believe this is imperative and absolutely essential if we are going to make progress in terms of the development and training of the employees as defined in clause l(vi). I have carefully studied the hon. the Minister’s speech and I believe that our interpretation is correct. It is indeed the hon. the Minister’s intention, in terms of the amendment on the Order Paper, to bring about a consolidation of these two measures. We hope the hon. the Minister will now find an opportunity to explain to us the department’s intention in terms of the consolidation of these two in-service training measures. I mention this particularly because the definition of “employees” at the moment, read in conjunction with the hon. the Minister’s amendment, means that Blacks will be trained under the new in-service schemes, and trust that there will be a long-term objective of consolidation of the two schemes.

Mr. Chairman, it is very clear to me that when the party opposite, as it used to be, split up into two, the little comprehension that there was, was vested in the party of the hon. member for Durban North. He made a sensible speech. [Interjections.] With the PFP there is no comprehension whatsoever. [Interjections.]

What are we dealing with here? We have the situation here that a department is administering the training of Black people. For that there is a law. That department is continuing with its work. In the meantime a need has arisen for the provision of training for the remaining workers of South Africa, the Whites, the Coloureds and Asians. What we are doing in one field, we must do in the other field as well. That is precisely what we are doing here.

If we have to wait until an administrative situation is created where one Act could take care of everybody’s interests, it would only mean that the shortage which already exists, will simply be perpetuated. We want to start getting to grips with the problem now, and not at some stage in the future. So we have taken a second logical step. We say that if we effect consolidation, it would only mean that one brings two things together and carries on with ones task. We are holding that out as a prospect If we were to wait for that for an indefinite period, however, our present backlog would become even bigger.

Those hon. members are so obsessed with Black people enjoying the same benefits in all fields that they are unable to suggest any sensible change. We are really getting tired now of hearing that kind of argument on every occasion. So I have nothing more to say about it. It is a simple thing that we are doing here. If hon. members of the Official Opposition did not hear it, I want to repeat that when the opportunity for consolidation presents itself we shall avail ourselves of it.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to ask the hon. the Minister a question. I quite understand when the hon. the Minister says that there could be consolidation in future. In the meantime there will be an interim period. We have the 1976 in-service training system for Blacks and the hon. the Minister is creating a similar system for the Whites and the other population groups here. But in the end consolidation is going to take place and the hon. the Minister agrees that it will take place as envisaged in the report. All that I want to ask, is whether in the interim period it might perhaps be possible for a Black person for whom it might not be possible to undergo in-service training at an in-service training centre specifically created for Blacks …

Order! The hon. member for Durban Central must confine himself to the clause.

That is precisely what I am doing, Sir. My question relates directly to this clause. [Interjections.] It is a question of who is admitted and for whom this legislation is intended. [Interjections.] What I should like to know is whether, in the interim period, there will be a possibility for a Black to undergo training at an in-service training centre intended only for Whites, Coloureds or Indians if a similar training centre for him does not exist.

Mr. Chairman, this is an aspect that we shall deal with as it comes up. We are dealing here with legislation that provides for the in-service training of Whites, Coloureds and Indians. In the previous legislation, however, it was stated very expressly that the whole question of training was one of the tasks we were going to entrust to the National Manpower Commission. This will be one of its major tasks. How people are to be trained, who is to be trained, what their training is going to cost, where they are to be trained, the rate at which they are trained and so on are the aspects of the scheme which we must now make a start with. All we are asking for in this legislation is for Parliament to afford us the opportunity to set the machine into operation. Money is available for it. All we have to do is initiate the process. Then the hon. member can come to me next year and say whether certain problems have occurred in the interim.

Therefore if the hon. member now asks me whether those things will be possible in principle if a centre does not exist at a certain place for the training of a person of another race group, I want to point out to him that it is part of the policy of the NP that if there are no suitable training facilities for separate training, they will be created. If the Government does not create them, it makes provision for the same training to be provided in the interim.

The definition in clause 1 excludes them, however.

The fact is that in-service training for Black people does exist. However, Whites and Coloureds are in a backward position. This legislation now eliminates that backlog. The facilities already exist. In other words, at the moment, provision is only made for the in-service training of Blacks. The legislation under discussion, however, seeks to provide for the in-service training of Blacks, Browns, Yellows and Whites—everyone. That is the whole purpose of the Bill.

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

1. (1) On page 2, in lines 17 to 19, to omit “, an apprentice or a person who is being trained in the work of an artisan”;
2. (2) on page 4, in line 21, to omit all the words after “industry” up to and including “1956)” in line 23.

I just want to point out again that it is a fact that in-service training facilities do exist. Where they do not exist this legislation is aimed at creating them. I am now referring to facilities for Black people. There are no in-service training facilities for the other race groups. The need for them is, however, arising very rapidly. The aim of this legislation is to meet that need. That is all we are trying to do.

Mr. Chairman, I can understand the motivation of the hon. the Minister in bringing this Bill before the House. As we have already indicated, we support it.

However, I have one particular query in connection with the clause now under discussion. When in future it becomes desirable to move the training facilities for Black people from another department to the hon. the Minister’s department, I would suggest that it is desirable now to amend the definition as contained in clause 1. I therefore move the following amendment—

By accepting this amendment the hon. the Minister would quite clearly establish that it is his intention that when the three departments are brought together there will then be no further legislation or legislative problems in connection with bringing all those people together. I should like to put it to the hon. the Minister that I have moved the amendment to indicate to him that we appreciate what the problem is. We can see that it is his intention to bring the two departments together. We understand that the Bill is designed to create for Indians, Coloureds and Whites facilities which do not exist at present. When the time arrives to bring the two departments together, there will be a problem because the Bill, when it becomes an Act, will contain in its definitions that portion which my amendment seeks to omit. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister to accept the amendment in view of that situation.

Mr. Chairman, I perceive the point the hon. member has raised. However, I cannot accept his amendment because there is a whole series of technical problems involved. It really cannot be said that it will take years before we get to that. Financial provision is being made under the Vote of another department for the expenditure the system will involve. Usually some time elapses before matters are disposed of administratively, but all that the hon. member is interested in is to know what our goal is. He wants to know whether we want to achieve that. In reply to that I say that we certainly do want to arrive at that. If, technically speaking, we could have done it in another way, we would have done so. I hope that in a year’s time we should have progressed much further with what we are seeking to do. I have stated what we want to do at this stage and I hope that hon. members will assist me so that we can get it done. They must give us the opportunity to do so.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. Minister whether it would not be better to leave the door open so that when it happens, we need not amend legislation?

We shall in any event be introducing a consolidation measure.

Amendment moved by Mr. W. M. Sutton negatived (Official Opposition and New Republic Party dissenting).

Amendments moved by the Minister of Labour agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clause 14:

Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment—

The aim of the amendment is only to bring the English text into line with the Afrikaans text Apparently in the printing of the Bill a line was left out.

Mr. Chairman, I accept the amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Venda’s becoming independent will have certain consequences as far as the application of the Unemployment Insurance Act is concerned. I am pleased that hon. members opposite understand why we are placing consequential legislation on the Order Paper while the Status of Venda Bill still has to be discussed.

The position will be as follows—

1. (1) The Act will no longer be applicable in Venda from the date on which it becomes independent.
2. (2) Employers who fall under the definition of “employer” in section 4 will be excluded, and their and their employees’ liability to be contributors will cease.
3. (3) In terms of section 41 (l)(h) of the Act persons who are outside the Republic are not entitled to receive benefits, and from the date on which Venda becomes independent, no payment of benefits there will be possible.
4. (4) Employees who are recruited on contract in Venda for service in the Republic and who have to return to their country on termination of their service will, as in the case of citizens of all foreign countries, be excluded from the definition of “contributor” in terms of section 2(2)(a).
5. (5) Inhabitants of Venda who do not render a service under contract in the Republic and who do not have to be repatriated upon termination of their service, will be contributors unless they are otherwise excluded from the definition of “contributor”, just as in the case of all persons in the Republic.

The question which arose was what obligation there should be to contributors who are resident in Venda in respect of ordinary unemployment benefits, maternity benefits and illness allowances when Venda becomes independent and what steps ought to be taken. As hon. members know, benefits from an unemployment insurance fund serve as a temporary source of income to assist the worker until he can find work again. With a view to a gradual transition stage the Government felt that the status quo should be maintained for a period in order to prevent disruption and dissatisfaction in respect of workers who were contributors and built up credits prior to the date of independence. During the transitional period the Venda Government can then decide what its own wishes are in connection with the establishment of an unemployment insurance fund for its territory.

Certain proposals on the application of the Unemployment Insurance Act after the date of independence were submitted last year to the working committee which was appointed to undertake the necessary preparatory work on the coming independence of Venda. These proposals were accepted by the Venda Cabinet. The proposals are embodied in the Bill which is now before this House. I should now like to furnish hon. members with particulars of the proposed amendments.

Clause 1:

This clause makes provision for the insertion of a new section in the Act which will protect certain persons who were entitled to benefits and allowances prior to Venda’s becoming independent.

Subsection (1)

Persons who were drawing benefits or were entitled to receive benefits will continue in a normal way to receive such benefits after independence until they are stopped for some reason or other in the normal course of events. Consequently no change occurs until such time as the person has received all the benefits to which he was entitled in respect of the application concerned, whether prior to or after independence. Payments in respect of all approved applications or applications that may be approved prior to independence, therefore continue after independence.

Subsections (2) and (3)

Any person who, prior to Venda’s becoming independent, was a contributor, had built up the necessary credits and qualifies for benefits, may continue to receive such benefits during a period of three years after independence.

As far as ordinary benefits are concerned, a person will still be able to qualify throughout the period of three years since the proposed section 64D(3) provides that service in Venda during the three years is regarded as “otherwise employed”, in other words not as a “contributor”, or from the date of independence persons in Venda no longer contribute to the fund. Although credits may no longer be built up, therefore, such persons may still qualify for benefits in respect of credits already built up prior to the date of independence.

As far as illness allowances and maternity benefits are concerned, persons will no longer be able to qualify after a certain period, depending upon the date of commencement of the illness or the expected date of confinement, since the Act provides that persons shall have been in service for certain specific periods as contributors to be able to qualify for such benefits. These provisions are also applicable to persons from the Republic who have for some reason or other ceased to work as contributors.

Subsection (4)

This subsection provides that the provisions of the Act which refer to the keeping of wage records and contributors’ record cards shall continue to be applicable in Venda after the date of independence. This is essential to be able to determine what a worker’s earnings were when he became unemployed. The worker will also have to be in possession of his contributor’s record card when he applies for benefits.

Subsection (5)

The envisaged amendment provides that applications for benefits shall be dealt with by a claims officer. However, such applications will not be considered if they are not submitted prior to or on the date on which the three-year period expires.

Dependence allowances are not affected. The submission of such applications will still be possible after the three-year period. This is also the position in the Republic in respect of foreign citizens. Their dependants may make application, regardless of where they are living. The qualification for that, however, is that application shall be made within three years after the date of death of the contributor and that proof shall be furnished that the deceased contributor was in employment as a contributor for not less than 13 weeks during the five years immediately preceding the date of his death.

Mr. Speaker, in broad outline these are the amendments. I just want to say once again that the agreement was accepted by this Government as well as the Cabinet of Venda. I also want to draw hon. member’s attention to the fact that the agreement contained in this Bill is identical to the agreement concluded in 1976 when the Transkei became independent. I trust that it will meet with the approval of the House. The various parties and the committee concerned entered into an agreement on this matter. If we had not done so, it would have meant that those people who had made contributions in the past would have lost their benefits. One would not like to do this to anyone.

Mr. Speaker, this Bill anticipates the independence of Venda. The hon. the Minister asked us to approve of the entire scheme relating to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. These amendments will become operative when Venda becomes independent. Over many years they have maintained ties with employers and employees in South Africa, and now this bridge has to be crossed.

The first question which occupies our mind, is the question whether at this stage we can consider a Bill of which clause 5(2) anticipates the independence of Venda. I want to make it quite clear that our attitude to this Bill, which concerns the independence of the Venda people, is without prejudice to the Status of Venda Bill. We regard this Bill as one which really provides for the transfer of pension rights. This is an idea which is not new to hon. members in this House. There are ample precedents for us to follow as to how to approach this Bill which anticipates the independence of Venda. Nevertheless, I feel that this Bill should have been introduced after the disposal of the Status of Venda Bill.

Looking at the Statute itself, it would appear that in accordance with section 64A the exact same provisions applied by Act No. 108 of 1976 are also introduced in the Bill we are now dealing with. So obviously one would refer back to the debates in Hansard in 1976 when the hon. the Minister introduced that Bill and the two Opposition parties gave their views on it. It is peculiar that the hon. member who represented the constituency that I now represent appeared to be the chief spokesman on this matter at the time. He had a problem with the Bill to begin with, as appears from column 7473 of the Hansard of 24 May 1976, in that he said that this House was in fact putting the cart before the horse in its approach to the matter. A precedent was also created by the hon. member for Pinelands in 1976 when, speaking on behalf of the then Progressive Party, he said in column 7473—

I want to make it quite clear to the hon. the Minister and hon. members that this is also our approach to the legislation. I do not want hon. members opposite or next to us to argue, when we discuss the Status of Venda Bill, that we are in any way prejudiced by our approach to this legislation.

The Bill, as I have already said, contains precisely the same provisions as are contained in the Act of 1976 and is obviously introduced here pursuant to an agreement between the South African Government and the Venda people themselves. Looking at section 64B of the principal Act, it can be seen that, while what is being done in this Bill is the same as was done in the case of Transkei prior to its independence, in the case of Bophuthatswana the amendment was slightly different. I think the hon. the Minister will confirm that the same option was given to the Venda people as was given to the people of Bophuthatswana, namely that they could opt for either a moratorium of three years to carry over the unemployment insurance fund or to be paid out, as indeed Bophuthatswana was, in terms of section 64B, paid out a sum of, I think, R300 000 which, I take it, was calculated on the basis of the fund and pro rata to the contributions made by those people. I therefore take it, and I think the hon. the Minister will confirm, that this is the agreement and that the Venda people have opted for the three-year period.

It was not an agreement; they prefer this.

Therefore, as far as this is concerned, there is obvious merit in this arrangement. This concerns a fund involving some R207 million, which makes it a very substantial fund. The purpose of the fund is, obviously, a very useful one, not only in the case of the death of an employee, but also in the case of sickness or pregnancy of a female employee. Obviously, the contributions that have already been paid in by these people should not be lost and they should get the benefit of that.

Looking at the situation as far as the Venda are concerned, I understand that we are talking about approximately 305 000 people in the proposed new area. In the White areas there are something like 128 000 people and in the other Black States some 14 000 of these people. Therefore, we are dealing with a population of some 449 000, but I do not have the exact break-down of the number of employees who are involved in terms of this legislation. I do not believe that these provisions will enable those people to receive the benefits, which will continue to apply, and that the three-year period will give the newly independent State the opportunity to formulate and to build up their own unemployment insurance fund in order to see that the benefits for the people will not be lost.

However, two questions do arise, questions which also arose during the discussions in 1976. Firstly, how can we be assured that the records provided for in clause 1 of the Bill will be preserved by a State which is independent and no longer under our jurisdiction? The answer given by the hon. the Minister in 1976 was that in terms of the agreement this matter was fully taken care of. Can the hon. the Minister, therefore, give us the assurance that the terms of the agreement have been extended and that the records, the job cards, etc., will be retained on that basis so that proper applications can be made to the Fund?

In the second place, I want to raise the question of the establishment of offices where applications for claims can be made in terms of the Act If I remember correctly, the offices established for Transkei were in East London and in Durban. Perhaps the hon. the Minister can tell us how and where the various offices will be established for this particular state which is made up in a far more complicated way and which is far more fragmented than Transkei. Easy access should be assured when the hon. the Minister decides where the various offices are to be established.

The only other question that arises, is the question in regard to the period of three years, which is obviously a period that has been agreed upon. This period was first applied in regard to Transkei. At the time it was queried in the House whether a period of three years is long enough and whether it will suffice for the change-over. I think that, since three years have elapsed since 1976, the Government should by now have been able to establish whether or not three years has been a fair trial period and whether we should now perpetuate the application of the period of three years in this respect. We can now from experience establish whether this is a satisfactory period, because, as I have said, the issue was raised whether the time allocated was sufficient for the change-over. I therefore think that the hon. the Minister should now be able to tell us whether the period of three years settled for is in fact a workable period and whether it is not only satisfactory to both sides, but will also enable the people making claims on the Unemployment Insurance Fund to receive their benefits. For the reasons I have mentioned we shall support the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to provoke a long discussion at this point because in my opinion it is unnecessary, since this legislation is merely a repetition of a section of previous legislation introduced and accepted in this House in terms of which some of our Black states obtained independence. Apparently the hon. member for Hillbrow just wanted to say a few words because it seems that he really agrees with everything. However, I believe that one should not make oneself ridiculous when one feels that one is obliged to speak for a while. The hon. member said, inter alia, that “one must retain the job cards”. That just shows how little the hon. member really knows about the legislation. What job cards must one retain? A “job card” is a card used to clock in every day. I think that what that hon. member had in mind was the “employment benefit card” which one hands in the day one retires. That is what that hon. member called a “job card”. That hon. member is trying to be clever but it is clear to me that he has only a hazy notion of what this is about.

All that is really happening here is that the contributors to this fund are being afforded a guarantee. However, that hon. member wanted to make an impression in the House this evening. He said that the population of Venda was 320 000. What has the population of Venda to do with this legislation? This legislation only concerns the employees that have contributed to the unemployment insurance fund. The only guarantee one wants to give to these people is that they will retain the benefits for which they have contributed over the years, for example unemployment insurance benefits, maternity benefits and sickness benefits.

The hon. member is also deeply concerned about whether it will be fair if they will only be guaranteed the benefits for three years. Over the past two years a tremendous number of new benefits have been added. Therefore the provisions of the Bill cut both ways. If an employee has contributed over a long period it may be that he might not eventually get his rightful share back but on the other hand there are many employees, who have contributed to this fund for a very short period, that will now enjoy the improved benefits. I therefore believe that the hon. member is only wasting the time of the House and because I do not want to do so too, I just want to say that we should like to support the Second Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, It was quite interesting to see how the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark reacted to the small mercies for which they should be grateful. Everything I heard the hon. member for Hillbrow say was in fact in support of the Bill. Although he may have taken a little time about doing so, I think he came up with some very interesting facts. I should, in fact, like to repeat what was said earlier about its predecessor—it was the hon. member for Hillbrow and his predecessor who took the words out of my mouth—and that is that the Bill is really putting the cart before the horse. If hon. members on that side of the House lose the coming debate on the independence of Venda they will, of course, have to rescind this particular amending Bill. However, we admit that the probability is fairly high that Venda will be granted independence, like the official Opposition we reserve our rights. So in no way does our support for this particular Bill indicate, by any measure or means, even the possibility that we shall be supporting the Status of Venda Bill. However, given that that eventuality is likely to take place, the primary concern of this party is to ensure that those members of the public who work in Venda will not be worse off in terms of the Unemployment Insurance Act than if Venda had remained a part of South Africa.

The hon. the Minister has given us the motivation for the introduction of this Bill. He has to a large measure satisfied us, both by an historical precedent in case of the Transkei and by the negotiations that took place between Venda and South Africa, that the position of people who are currently affected by the Unemployment Insurance Act in Venda, and may be prejudiced if Venda becomes independent, will be such that they will not be worse off than they would have been if Venda had remained part of the Republic. I believe that the hon. member for Hillbrow is quite correct in saying that history has shown us in the past three years that the probability that people will be worse off, if this Bill is passed, is fairly slight. Therefore, we in this party will have no difficulty in supporting this Bill on the basis that it will take care of the interests of those people who remain behind in Venda once that country becomes independent. We therefore have no difficulty in supporting the Second Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, as regards the question whether the people that are now being affected are better or worse off, I want to give the hon. member the absolute assurance that we are going out of our way to ensure that they are just as well off if not better off. The hon. member for Hillbrow asked me whether the machinery at present in existence would continue in its present form. The reply is “yes”.

The second question he asked me was whether an operative place, if one may call it that, had been decided on. The answer is “no”. We must come to an agreement on that. However, that is not a problem. I just want to point out to the hon. member that we are assisting them.

The whole purpose of the project is that we are assisting them to build up a structure to carry on with after the time. In other words, we are assisting them to administer it themselves. We are placing people there. That is not a problem.

The third question the hon. member put to me was whether the period of three years was a sensible period, what the practise was and whether it was functioning well. This has been agreed upon. According to our own calculations this is approximately the period in which we shall return to the people what they themselves have pumped into it. However, this is what we have agreed upon. Once again we have gone out of our way to ensure that we are according them very fair treatment I want to give the hon. member the assurance that it would surely not be such a fine gesture on our part if we had not really given the total benefit to that side, too, by way of these arrangements. This was so in the case of Transkei and Bophuthatswana, although we had two different arrangements there. However, they are very satisfied with the arrangements we made with them.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a Second Time.

Committee Stage

Clause 1:

Mr. Chairman, we have no difficulty with this clause. However, I feel constrained to rise and to say that I wonder to what extent any measure of co operation is appreciated by hon. members on the Government side. We have tried to assist the hon. the Minister by stating precisely on what grounds we support this measure. One should hope that something like this would be taken into consideration. Unfortunately, the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark has seen fit to react to our co-operative mood by replying to us in a most ungracious manner.

He is a hit-and-run expert.

If that is the type of response we can expect when we support legislation when we have been requested to do so in order to assist an hon. Minister, then I am afraid we will think twice in future before offering the same assistance in such a willing manner. However, we are not so small-minded as to act out a fit of pique and to turn round then and say that because of the approach by the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark we are not prepared to co-operate any further. We are not small-minded when there are big things at stake. It is unfortunate that the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark has been so small-minded to launch an attack of this nature.

The reference to the number of people in Venda and the way in which Venda is to be divided, are things of great importance. The number of people obviously relates to the number of employees and to how they will draw upon the Fund of R270 million, which is to be established.

Mr. Chairman, I shall leave it at that.

Clause agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported without amendment.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Chairman, as we indicated during the Second Reading stage of this Bill, this is the clause in this Bill to which we object. It is the clause in terms of which the fine is increased of anyone who contravenes subsection 10bis of the Bantu (Urban Areas) Act, and employs an unregistered person. In terms of this clause the fine is increased from a maximum of R100 to a maximum of R500 upon a first conviction, and to a fine of not less than R500 upon a second conviction.

We object to this clause very strongly, firstly because we are in principle against the whole idea of restricting the mobility of South African citizens and of not allowing them to sell their labour in the market which will pay them best for that labour. Secondly we are against this measure because we happen to know that the enormous numbers of arrests under the pass laws, exceeding 225 000 a year, is one of the greatest causes of racial friction in South Africa. We are against these restrictions on mobility. We believe that the return of people to homelands which have no jobs to offer them is not the way to solve the problem, which is basically a problem of unemployment.

As a result, presumably of the Riekert Commission’s recommendation, the onus is now being placed on employers and they are to be fined very heavily if they infringe the law which does not allow them to employ an unregistered person. We believe that this is tantamount to punishing people who have provided employment for fellow South African citizens and we believe this will result in large numbers, thousands of people, being displaced from employment in domestic service, in industry, in commerce and in other urban employment. The result will be that these people will be discharged since employers will not be prepared to run the risk of these heavy fines. The discharged people will not be able to find alternative employment, but, contrary to the expectations of the Government, they will not be streaming back to the homelands because they know full well that there is no employment for them there. They will therefore stay illegally in the urban areas and in the end they are naturally going to turn to crime.

We envisage an enormous increase in crime as a result of this clause because thousands of unemployed Blacks who formerly had jobs which enabled them to support their families back in the homelands, will now have no alternative but to turn to illegal ways of earning their living. We object to this. We believe this is not the way in which to tackle the basic problem of unemployment.

Last night when I raised this issue during the Second Reading debate, I suggested to the hon. the Deputy Minister that in this regard the same course of action be taken that was, I believe, very sensibly taken by the Government as far as the Rhodesians and Malawians were concerned. In other words, there was a moratorium declared and a time limit was placed.

I did that.

The hon. the Minister was a Deputy Minister at the time and he did something very sensible.

I was very sensible all the way.

I hope he will influence the hon. the Deputy Minister sitting behind him to do exactly the same thing. It was a wise measure indeed. The Administrator-elect of the Transvaal made the decision that he would allow a certain period during which people in employment—many of whom had been in employment for a long time; some for months and some for years—should be given the opportunity of becoming legally registered in employment. That seems to me to be a very sensible compromise; let us put it that way, because it does not meet with our entire objections since we stand for the mobility of labour and propagate the taking of the steps that pari passu would have to be taken with the abolition of influx control. Those steps include the building of houses, the creation of jobs and so on.

It is not as easy as the hon. the Deputy Minister thinks to create jobs in the homelands. This is a very expensive enterprise indeed because it costs at least R9 000 per job in areas where there is no infrastructure, in areas which are far from the markets and in areas which have no raw materials available and so on. It is no accident that industry locates in the areas where we find industries in South Africa. Entrepreneurs locate in areas where there is the proximity of a market, in areas where they know there is transport, there is infrastructure such as power and there is raw material available. At the moment cheap labour is the only advantage that the homelands by and large can offer. The exceptions are a few isolated growth points like Babalegi, which happens to be near the PWV triangle, and perhaps areas like Mdantsane which is near East London. The advantage of cheap labour is not enough to offset the locational advantages of being in the metropolitan areas. Therefore it is not so easy to persuade capitalists to locate their industries in the homelands.

I suggest as a compromise this moratorium which was devised by the then hon. Deputy Minister now to become the Administrator of the Transvaal. I suggest that a period of time be given to allow these people to register if their employers can show that they are prepared to give references of character and to prove that these people have been in employment for some considerable time. That would at least help to keep people, who are at present supporting families in the homelands, off the streets and in employment, where the hon. the Deputy Minister knows full well, there are no alternative avenues of employment.

Yesterday the hon. the Deputy Minister did say, if I heard him correctly, that people only have to telephone and say that they have somebody in employment, and have accommodation for that person, and they will be able to register such a person. I hope I understood the hon. the Deputy Minister correctly. He then went on to point out that these were the two cardinal principles laid down in the report of the Riekert Commission, i.e. availability of housing and/or accommodation and the availability of employment, and if employers can show that the people they have engaged have been provided with accommodation, and are clearly in a permanent job, they will then be able to register them legally. I hope very much that the hon. the Deputy Minister will be able to give us that reassurance in his reply.

Mr. Chairman, as is her custom, the hon. member for Houghton became very excited about this minor matter.

I was very quiet.

I found it very interesting that what the hon. member said here contained the usual political barb. She said the following: “Restricting of mobility of South African citizens.” A little later she said: “The employment for fellow South African citizens.” Looking at the approach and the speeches by the hon. members of the PFP over the past two Parliamentary sessions, it is as clear as daylight that as far as the matter of citizenship—which the hon. member raised in the discussion of this clause where it is not at all relevant—is concerned, she is trying to work up a kind of atmosphere. In this regard I want to tell her that when she discusses Black people and the provisions of the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, she must not bring up here the emotional concept of “citizenship” which they started with, together with many enemies of South Africa, on the basis of the citizenship provisions.

She speaks about people who, in terms of the provisions of this clause, when there is no longer work for them and their illegal employment has to be terminated due to higher penalties imposed on employees, will turn to crime. Surely it is not logical if the Bill deals specifically with illegal employment and seeks to restrict specific employees, to say that one must legalize an illegality because if it is not done a number of other illegalities such as crime and all kinds of other things will arise out of the fact that people are not employed. In my opinion it is an incorrect approach to say that one must legalize one offence in an effort to prevent another.

The fact of the matter is that the increase in the penalty is aimed expressly at restricting White employers from employing people illegally, often—and the hon. the Deputy Minister referred to this last night—at salaries that simply ought not to be paid to people. This is done because some of the employers are aware that they can allow the people to slip in the backdoor and can use them, often abuse them, and still cannot be brought to justice. The effect of illegal employment by many employers in our urban complexes is, as the hon. member correctly said, the crime that we have as a result of an over-concentration of people in urban areas. What point is there in employing people illegally and allowing more and more Black people to stream to the urban areas where there are tremendous problems relating to housing and the general development of the Black residential areas where these people can stay?

[Inaudible.]

It is not fair to the Black people or the economic over concentration. It is not fair to anyone that people should be employed illegally. It is the express intention of this provision to deter White employers and other employers from illegally employing people for whom proper housing, among other things, is not available. I think the hon. member is doing us all a disservice by making out in this way that by means of this provision we want to cause all types of crime among Black people. Our very aim is to bring about order in society by not permitting people to be employed illegally if proper housing is not available for them. In the report of the Riekert Commission specific emphasis is laid on the issue of the availability of housing and of lawful employment. We are doing an injustice to thousands and thousands of Black people for whom proper housing and other facilities are not available and who cannot therefore be accommodated in an orderly fashion, if we permit them to be employed by employers without taking action against those employers. I certainly cannot agree with the hon. member when she says that the penalty should not be increased.

Mr. Chairman, we shall vote against this clause. Yesterday evening, when I indicated that we would support the Second Reading of this Bill, but that we had serious reservations about the two clauses to which I referred, the hon. member for Barberton really flew off the handle. He went into orbit and said that I said nothing about why we were going to support the Bill. I just want to say to him that he must stick his finger into one of his ears so that the words of wisdom can go in and not go out again. I want to explain to him what our object is in opposing this particular clause. The problem we are facing—the hon. member for Houghton has mentioned this—is that at present there exists a large degree of unemployment among the Black people. The hon. the Deputy Minister knows that this is so, and this particular clause makes the probability of increased unemployment almost unavoidable.

How do you work that out?

I shall tell the hon. member how I work it out. I want to refer to the situation in Natal, a situation I know very well. There are numberless people who live in the Black areas next to Pietermaritzburg who work in Pietermaritzburg in people’s gardens, etc., and whom it is very difficult indeed to register, for the very simple reason that the magisterial districts in Pietermaritzburg, such as Impendle and others, are zoned as far as work is concerned. If one lives and has a business in Hammarsdale one may not employ a person who comes from Greytown, although the distance between Greytown and Hammarsdale is only about 30 or 40 miles as the crow flies. The regulations and the red tape indulged in by the hon. the Minister’s department make it impossible for a person legally to employ a young man who offers himself for work in a garden. There are hundreds of housewives in Pietermaritzburg, which is known as the Azalea city of South Africa, who want to employ these people as garden boys, but the regulations laid down by the hon. the Minister’s department make it impossible to register these people in order to employ them legally. There are countless people in Pietermaritzburg who are at present illegally employed in terms of the regulations laid down by the department of the hon. the Deputy Minister. What is now going to happen is that all of them are going to be deprived of a job. They are doing no harm there. Every night they return to their homes in the Black areas next to Pietermaritzburg. They are not occupying premises or living in backyards, etc., but are perfectly law-abiding in the sense that at night they all go to their homes. Everyone who is employed and is earning money, has a large number of dependants, because of the structure of the Zulu system in terms of which the family depends on every working member to support it. Many of the regular breadwinners of those families are at present out of work simply because the industrial climate in that area has deteriorated. What the hon. the Deputy Minister is deliberately doing is putting those people out of work because he is creating a situation where the employers will be fined an amount of R500 which is going to be a very strong and positive disincentive for people not to employ these people. People have up till now thought that they might get away with it and that they could take a chance and not get caught, even though they were breaking the law—and I admit that quite freely. This practice is followed on a very large scale and it is doing no harm. It is not destroying White South Africa; the edifice of our power will not come tumbling down. We could continue with this practice without doing any harm. It will place people in employment, people who are making their contribution to the maintenance of their families, the extended families dependent on them for …

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

No, the hon. member can make his own speech. As we are in the Committee Stage, the hon. member can get up and have a good old bash for himself, 10 minutes at a time. Mr. Chairman, you will have to give me guidance on whether it is competent for me to move to negative the clause, but we shall certainly vote against the clause. My appeal to the hon. the Deputy Minister is to take the heat off this issue at this stage. Today this is a situation of the utmost gravity as far as employment is concerned. Every man who is working and who is a member of the Black community is of vital importance to those people.

What about the many women involved?

The hon. member for Houghton says that there are many, many Black women who are also in employment as domestics. But I am talking specifically about a case I know a lot about. I therefore ask the hon. the Minister to consider whether this is not the time to temper the wind to the shorn lamb in view of the immense pressure on the Black community at present just to keep their heads above water. To introduce a provision like this is in my opinion irresponsibility of the highest possible order. Therefore, I again appeal to the hon. the Deputy Minister not to proceed with this at this stage.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the hon. member for Houghton and also to put our case once again. We are now dealing with one of the most contentious clauses in this Bill. The title of this Bill is Laws on Plural Relations and Development Second Amendment Bill. I thought that we had changed this to Cooperation and Development. Where is the co-operation with the Black people and where is the development?

Order! The hon. member may not hold a Second Reading speech. I have allowed the hon. member for Houghton a certain amount of latitude, but the hon. member must confine himself to the clause, the only purpose of which is to provide for a fine of R500.

It is the R500 I am dealing with—that is the $64 000 question. [Interjections.] I am amazed that the hon. member for Innesdal, whom I have always known from past experience as one of the more enlightened men on that side of the House, can get up here today and make the speech that he did. I do not know where he was yesterday when we in these benches made it very clear that, as far as this clause is concerned, we are elevating the importance of this contravention to such an extent that we are now telling the courts that for a second offence there must be a minimum sentence of R500. It is like the Drugs Act where minimum sentences were imposed which were changed at a later stage. The fine of R500 makes even a first offence a very serious offence. What the hon. member for Innesdal does not seem to understand is that we are dealing with a very important problem, the problem of unemployment.

I understand everything you said yesterday.

If the hon. member does not want to understand, we must try to make him understand. What I am saying is that unemployment will be increased by reason of the fact that thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of employers will be so scared now that they will let their employees go, employees who have perhaps been with them for many, many years. We should not increase the unemployment problem and the attendant problems unemployment brings about through creating discontent. At all costs we must see that there is not unnecessary discontent. Therefore we should not proceed with this clause. We should also consider carefully the plea for a moratorium for a certain period to enable all those who are in employment at the moment to be granted a period of six months or a year …

The hon. member cannot discuss the moratorium now.

With respect, Sir, we say …

Order! I know what the hon. member is saying, but he must listen to what I have to say.

Mr. Chairman, will you hear me out on this point? The principle has now been established that the fine is going to be R500. I believe Kilpin says in his book that the working of a clause, which contains a principle, can be dealt with in the Committee Stage. I am dealing with the working of the clause at the moment. I want to tell the hon. the Minister, with respect, that it is necessary, just as was done in regard to arms and ammunition, where the people were given a certain time in which to register, that, if he is going to insist on this clause and if we are going to be outvoted on this, it is vital that a moratorium be granted to allow people to register. Who are we dealing with? We are dealing with tens of thousands of employees who need the jobs in order to be able to support their families.

Order! The hon. member must obey my ruling. The principle of this clause is that provision is being made for a fine, and the only thing under discussion now is the amount of that fine.

The consequences of the fine …

That was discussed in the Second Reading stage.

Mr. Chairman, with great respect, I want to ask you to reconsider your decision. We are dealing with a fine, and the implications of the fine and I therefore submit that we have to take into consideration the number of employees involved. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that it is not going to be easy for him to enforce this measure. There are certain laws similar to this one which relate to Malawians. Does the hon. the Minister know how much it will cost to send a Malawian back to Malawi? If he knows that, he will realize that the courts are reluctant and in fact refuse, when it comes to a conviction for illegal employment, to send them back to Malawi because the high costs are not warranted. The Government is not prepared to spend the price of an air fare from anywhere in South Africa to Malawi.

Order! Air fares have nothing to do with this clause.

Mr. Chairman, let me then tell the hon. the Minister …

Alf, we know you are a fool; do not demonstrate it.

If the hon. the Minister is not going to give way on this, I think he should at least, in the last instance, give consideration to all the domestics who are involved by granting them a moratorium on that basis.

Mr. Chairman, I move the following amendment—

Mr. Chairman, while I agree wholeheartedly that the hon. member for Houghton has a very admirable thought there, I do not believe that it necessarily caters for the problem of the working woman. In this regard I wish to advance further the thoughts put forward by the hon. member for Mooi River. The problem that we experience in the city of Durban is that we have Blacks, both male and female, living in Kwa Mashu or in Umlazi, which today form part of kwaZulu, who enter the city of Durban on what one might call a togt labour basis. These are people who are older. I know of an elderly man who is not able to hold down a full-time job. He is able to work three or four days a week and comes once a week, sometimes twice a week, as an occasional labourer to my home and works in the garden. On the other one or two days a week he has an arrangement with other people in the area. He does it in the same way as the females do charwork. Who is the registered employer? I put this as a question to the hon. the Minister. Are we to deny these people the right to earn an honest living?

Order! The question of registered employers was accepted in the first Bill. The only thing under discussion now is the fine of R500 and the hon. member for Houghton’s amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I am not seeking any advance on R500! I am trying to say that the penalty of R500 is tremendously excessive. [Interjections.] When you consider that we are dealing here with part-time domestic servants, I must ask what are people to do when they are faced with the situation? How can the home-owners afford to pay this sort of fine? The employer might employ a “togt” labourer, such as the one I have just described. He might either employ a charwoman or a “togt” labourer. If the hon. the Minister can give us an answer on that question, I shall be interested to hear it.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment as moved by the hon. member for Houghton will definitely, if accepted, result in the clause being made more human and practical. I do hope that the hon. the Deputy Minister will decide to accept it. However, I do not want to mislead the hon. the Deputy Minister in any way. Even if the hon. member’s amendment is accepted, the clause as a whole will not be acceptable to us. This clause deals with the increase of the fine from R100 to R500. This amounts to a stricter application of the pass laws. In this regard all of us listened with interest to the hon. member for Innesdal. As the hon. member for Hillbrow said, it is always worthwhile listening to the hon. member for Innesdal because he is one of the more enlightened hon. members on that side of the House.

I am not so sure.

Well, perhaps it is a matter of opinion. Some hon. members opposite might regard him as such. There is a certain degree of sincerity about the hon. member for Innesdal. Unfortunately that sincerity items to a large degree from his unshakeable belief in the moral sincerity of the NP. I am afraid that he is often wrong on that score. [Interjections.] The discussion until now dealt mainly with the fine of R500, in other words the stricter application of the pass laws. Consequently it also deals with the question of unemployment. I think the hon. member will admit that if this Bill is going to be implemented strictly, it will mean that more Blacks are going to lose their jobs, although to a lesser degree if the hon. the Deputy Minister accepts the amendments of the hon. member for Houghton. Even in those circumstances there is going to be greater unemployment.

The hon. member for Innesdal regards it as an asset because it will lead to the removal of those unemployed people from the cities to the rural areas. He regards this as a neat measure. According to him it does clean the place up a bit and it alleviates a problem. However, what happens to those unemployed people who leave the towns? Unfortunately it is a fact that they move to the rural areas, taking their unemployment with them. There they are once again unemployed. The economic opportunities in the rural areas, as indicated by all figures, are unfortunately no better there than in the cities; they are far worse than those in the cities. This is actually what our entire objection to the pass laws boils down to. The pass laws do not lead to a solution of a problem, but merely to the shifting of it All that one is saying through these laws is that the unemployed Blacks can be unemployed somewhere where we cannot see them. After all, that is more convenient [Interjections.] What the hon. member is actually saying in defence of this clause, and what will also be the result of the clause, amounts to nothing more than that.

Our real aim should be to adjust the work opportunities to the work seekers as far as possible in the difficult circumstances in which South Africa finds itself today; to equate supply and demand. This is the first law of economic management in every field. We must try to ensure that where there is a possibility of work and there is a person who is unemployed, we bring those two together. It is more likely …

Order! The hon. member is making rather a long detour now.

Mr. Chairman, my detour is still around your ruling. [Interjections.]

Yes, but the hon. member is not allowed to detour around my ruling. [Interjections.]

It still turns on your ruling, Sir. What is being proposed here, is that the fine be increased from R100 to R500. As long as the fine remains R100, I want to point out, with all due respect, that it is probable that that work opportunity and that work seeker will be brought together. As soon as the fine is increased to R500, it is less probable that that work opportunity will be available to that specific work seeker. Eventually the result is that there is more unemployment, even if that unemployment is virtually exported to the rural areas. Our objection to this clause revolves around that.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. member a question.

No, the hon. member can make a speech later on. Then I shall reply to his question. [Interjections.] If the hon. the Deputy Minister agrees that, in terms of the amendment the hon. member for Houghton moved, these people will be granted a period of three months and, moreover, if he puts into effect what he indicated he might put into effect, i.e. that where there is accommodation and work, permission to remain in the city will be granted to people, it will be a material improvement in the situation. We hope that he will at least make that concession if he is not prepared to delete this entire clause.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister is a reasonable person, and I believe he has heard enough arguments from this side of the House to warrant at least a second look at this particular clause which we are now discussing.

If my memory serves me correctly, this is the second proposed fine increase in a short space of time, and the effect of this amendment will be to increase the penalty, within a short period of time, by some 2 000%. This, to my way of thinking, is an indication of an admission of defeat. However, let me leave it at that. All I want to add is that I want to support the hon. member for Mooi River who, I believe, put a very fair case about why the hon. the Deputy Minister should consider not to raise the amount of the penalty to the amount of R500.

I should like to deal briefly with another aspect of this increase in the fine. That is the fact that at present—we know it should not happen, but we also know that it does happen—bribes are being paid in cases where illegal workers are found. A fine of R100 is to an ordinary householder a fairly significant amount of money, and we know that this does lend itself to the paying of bribes for the closing of an eye to an illegal situation. I want to put it to the hon. the Deputy Minister that to increase that fine to R500 he is going to increase the temptation of people to offer bribes, and he is going to increase the temptation of people in authority—very often people in a very poorly paid position—to accept such bribes. I believe that on those grounds alone the hon. the Deputy Minister should be prepared to reconsider this case.

While I am on my feet, Mr. Chairman, I hope you will allow me just a very small degree of latitude. I am sure you will quickly call me to order if I go beyond that small degree of latitude. What I want to say is that the hon. member for Mooi River and the hon. member for Umhlanga raised the question of “togt” labourers.

I think an extension of that is the young schoolboys who come in and seek work. I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether it is his intention that these very severe fines be applied in cases where such young schoolboys come in on a Saturday or over a weekend to do temporary labour and thereafter go home as the hon. member for Mooi River has said. They are not residing on the premises and are not creating a nuisance in built-up urban areas. They are simply trying to make ends meet. I should like the hon. the Deputy Minister to indicate to us whether it is his intention that the provisions of this clause will be called on the head of people who employ such youngsters. I should also like him to indicate whether there is some mechanism to allow these youngsters to be employed on a temporary basis, and to do away with the necessity of applying these harsh provisions to temporary needy work-seekers.

Mr. Chairman, if there is one thing which became very clear from the Opposition’s handling of this clause, it is that they are not interested in the Black person as such. The main thing to them is the employer. The fine applies to the employer of the Black person and not to the Black person himself as was the case in the past. The Opposition is trying to create the impression that unemployment only exists among the people who are illegally in these areas. Surely unemployment also exists among those who may work legally in the areas. The protection is for them and for no one else. We are not there to protect the employers; we want to protect those who are legally in the area and who cannot find work.

Order! My ruling also applies to the hon. member for Losberg.

No, Sir, it cannot be the case, because I am now discussing the R500 fine that may be imposed on the employer. It is this fine that the other side of the committee is objecting to so vehemently. It is true that if such a fine cannot be imposed on the employers, they will tend to employ people who will work for lower wages than people who are legally in the area, but who are unemployed. That is why I say that it is right that such employers should be fined and should have to pay a large fine. We have to protect those who are legally in the area, but who are unemployed.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton in which she asks that there should be a proviso providing for a moratorium. I would support this as some sort of second prize, but it might be an important and effective second prize if the hon. the Deputy Minister would be prepared to accept the amendment.

The more one listens to the debate from the Government side, the clearer it becomes that what the Government is trying to do here, is to make sure that people who are not registered or not qualified, are discouraged from moving into the urban areas. The Government also wants to see to it that those who are not registered or not qualified, move out of the urban areas. That this is the intention of the Government, is quite clear, especially if one listens to the hon. member for Innesdal who says that these people are being exploited by employers. He also talks about the need to frighten White employers so that they will see to it that their employees are properly housed. This is the sort of language we heard throughout the discussion of this Bill from hon. members on the Government benches. This is quite clearly a conscious attempt on the part of the Government to bring to the attention of employers the need to move these people out of the urban areas, otherwise why would the hon. the Deputy Minister have a clause along these lines in the Bill?

The clause provides for a fine. Sir, you ruled that hon. members should in the discussion of the clause confine themselves only to the principle of the fine. With respect and with reference to other hon. members who have taken part in this discussion, it goes further than simply the question of a fine. The original fine was a maximum of R100 for a first offence, but it is now being increased to R500. Further on the clause provides—

instead of R100—

These are very serious penalties indeed, particularly if attention is focused on what the intention of the Government is in regard to matters and people of this kind. One might well have a situation where an employer of a fairly large labour force is unwittingly going to commit this offence within a period of two years, because somewhere along the line he is going to have employees who do not qualify in terms of the qualification laid down by the legislation. One might then have an over-zealous law enforcement officer who might say that it is the employer’s second or third offence after a period of two years and that he is going to send the employer to prison. This is the sort of situation which is being invited. It is not just the question of a fine, but in certain circumstances a question of imprisonment without the option of a fine. Leaving the employees aside for a moment, one is placing the employer in the urban areas in an impossible position, particularly those employers who employ a fairly large number of workers. They may find it impossible to check to whether their employees are entitled to be in the urban areas concerned. To place the accent on penalties of this nature is, I think, placing those people in an impossible position. That is quite apart from the interest of the employees.

I do not know what the knowledge and experience of the hon. member for Innesdal and other hon. members are of the situation in the urban areas. What we are dealing with here is not 100 or 1 000 Black people. We are probably dealing with hundreds of thousands of Black people who will be affected by this particular provision if it is to be zealously applied. Throughout South Africa there are tens of thousands of Black people who, because of their economic needs, find themselves in urban areas and who perhaps are, in terms of the law, not qualified to be in those areas. This is going to be a real problem, and the hon. member for Houghton was absolutely right in indicating that poverty and unemployment which cannot be combated if this sort of measure is enforced in the way in which the hon. the Minister intends to enforce it. I therefore want to appeal to the hon. the Minister to reconsider the situation. I want to appeal to him to accept at least the proposal of a moratorium as moved by the hon. member for Houghton. This will at least give some sort of qualifying option at any rate.

Mr. Chairman, I want to convey my gratitude to you for having allowed approximately three-quarters of the speeches on this clause to exceed the ambit of the clause itself. I think, however, that it was a good thing that hon. members were able to express their opinions on such a very wide field. All the speakers opposite, without exception, spoke as if there never had been such legislation in the past, as if we suddenly want to impose a penal provision of R500 on innocent employers. Hon. members opposite created the impression that there had never been such legislation in the past and that we were suddenly imposing such a provision on the poor innocent employer who provides innocent employees with work.

In reply to the question the hon. member for Umhlanga asked about casual labourers I want to say that it has nothing to do with this clause. All we are asking for is that any casual labourer should register as a casual labourer. He pays R1 per month and then he may look for work. He has been registered and anyone who employs him merely has to say that he is working as a casual labourer. That is the easiest thing in the world.

Furthermore, I want to say to the hon. member for Berea that we are investigating the matter of young children working after hours over weekends. This matter has not yet been settled.

The most important facet hon. members missed is that the point at issue here is not unemployment. It is illegal employment, employment without the necessary authorization and registration. This legislation has been existing since 1945. The original penalty was R25. Subsequently it was increased to R50. Then it was increased to R100 because people simply did not take trouble to comply with the provisions of the Act I accuse thousands of employers of not wanting to take the trouble to comply with the registration requirements when they want to employ someone.

How can they if the employees have to enter legally? It does not help them.

I want to ask the hon. member what is wrong if a registered employer asks that someone be employed by him.

The employee has to enter the area legally in order to be registered. It is these thousands of people who are in the area illegally who cannot be registered.

What about those unemployed who are legally in the area?

They do not take those jobs.

It is no use arguing with the hon. member for Houghton. It remains a basic problem. In the Western Cape, for example, there are 4 000 unemployed Blacks who are legally registered but who cannot find work. Many of them are people who have to support families. The hon. member now wants an employer to be authorized to employ someone from outside the area at the expense of these poor people who are unemployed as a result of the economic circumstances.

The hon. member for Mooi River raised a very important point. If anyone can suggest methods that will facilitate registration and ease the flow of labour we will be altogether in favour of and accept them. We must try to find a less cumbersome method. The registration of labour is a cumbersome process in certain circumstances but the employers do not want to take the trouble to register their employees, with the result that those employees later lose their job and we have even more unemployed persons.

†The hon. members for Houghton and Hillbrow talked about unemployment. It is quite true that unemployment is not a basic reason for the increase in the fine. The reason for increasing the fine is to stop greater unemployment in certain areas.

Will they not perhaps have to dismiss their employees now? If they are not registered, they have to be dismissed.

The reason for doing so is to stop the flow of illegal people into an area while there is unemployment in that area. I have explained as far as the Western Cape is concerned.

They have been working in these places for years.

Why do they not register then? That is all we want.

*I said yesterday evening that if an employer is registered as such and he can obtain the services of a person who might qualify, everything will be set in motion to register that person so that he can be employed. What we primarily want—the hon. member for Innesdal was correct—is an ordered flow of people so that no social burden will be created after one has gotten rid of their services.

†The hon. member for Houghton talked about a moratorium. According to the dictionary the word “moratorium” means a postponement, and agreed delay and a deliberate, temporary suspension of some activity. I am not a legal man, but about what one thing I am very certain and that is that one cannot suspend a legal procedure in an acknowledged legal system. What legal standing do you have to suspend an existing procedure simply because the fine is being increased?

You have done it before.

The hon. member says we have done it before.

Do it again by simply accepting the amendment.

Order!

There is no legislation that provides that specific extension may be given to an existing penalty for other reasons. It simply does not exist.

You can hold an election.

Yes, but this is not a Moratorium Act.

You did it with the Rhodesians.

It is not intended for Rhodesia or Malawi; that is quite a different situation, a situation where there is an agreement with a foreign state. That is a specific labour agreement and certain conditions are stated. As I have said, I have great sympathy for this problem. What I should like to achieve in this country is that it should not be necessary for any Administration Board to have any inspector at all. There is nothing more detestable and oppressing that to track people down. I am the greatest advocate of that, and that is why I am asking for the assistance of the hon. members opposite. We can only achieve this if the people co-operate and do their part by the simple action of registering themselves as employers and by reporting to the labour bureaux and then obtaining the labour through the correct channels. Therefore I am sorry that I cannot accept the proposal of the hon. member for Houghton for a moratorium.

As long ago as 1977 the former Minister and the hon. the Minister of Justice warned that no plea of not guilty should be accepted any more. That was more than two years ago. If that is not a moratorium, what is? Even at that time there were warnings. In spite of repeated Press statements and in spite of the fact that the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Musgrave put questions about how many fines had been imposed, it simply did not deter people. This legislation was published two weeks ago and it was mentioned in the Press. It was mentioned again in this morning’s newspapers. The simple reaction we expect from these people is that they should ascertain whether the person employed by them is in fact registered.

Mr. Chairman, in his reply to the pleas made by the hon. member on this side of the House, mainly by the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Parktown, the hon. the Deputy Minister proved that he does not have the foggiest notion about certain aspects of this problem. The hon. the Deputy Minister asked: Why do the employers not register their employees?

Order! This clause does not deal with registration. I allowed the hon. the Deputy Minister to reply to the wide-ranging discussion that took place. The hon. member must now confine himself to the clause.

I am going to confine myself to the clause, to the result of the increased fines that can be imposed in terms of this clause. The hon. the Deputy Minister’s reply to this, his argument, was that people should register their employees to avoid this high fine. But they cannot do it, because in terms of the provisions of the laws of this Government there are tens of thousands of employees who have been working for years for certain families, a stable employer/employee situation …

Order! That principle was accepted in the previous legislation. The hon. member now has to confine himself to the amount of R500.

Mr. Chairman, I am merely reacting to the hon. the Deputy Minister’s statement that to avoid this fine, those people simply have to register their employees. In my opinion that is not possible.

Order! The hon. member must obey my ruling.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: This clause is amending section 10bis of the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, 1945, and I therefore want to know whether the hon. member is not entitled to indicate how the principal Act is affected by this amendment. That is what he is trying to do, because the hon. the Deputy Minister constantly ignored the provisions of the principal Act which this clause is amending.

Order! The hon. the Deputy Minister was answering assertions by hon. members when I allowed them some latitude, and he was entitled to do that. This clause is amending a provision of another law only in so far as the amount is concerned, and nothing else.

But the hon. the Deputy Minister said that all one had to do was to register one’s employees.

Mr. Chairman, I should now like to approach the matter from another angle. [Interjections.] The hon. the Deputy Minister, in my opinion, once again proved that he has no idea at all of what the shattering results of the implementation of these increased fines would be. In this regard I want to put it to the hon. the Minister that there are thousands of employees in the urban areas of South Africa who are in a stable situation because both they and their employers are satisfied with the situation. Many of these people are earning good salaries and are therefore able to support their families. In those cases the mere implementation of this clause will result in the employers affected by the clause simply being compelled to fire their employees. There is no employer who is prepared to take the risk of paying a minimum fine of R500 merely because they are employing Blacks illegally. This will be the case in spite of the fact that these i employers need those employees, in spite of the fact that they are able to provide those people with employment and in spite of the fact that they can pay those people good salaries. As a result of this clause those employers will simply fire those employees. Does the hon. the Deputy Minister realize what consequences this could entail for those unfortunate people? When those employees are fired, there is no other livelihood for them. What livelihood do they have? They will have to return to their homeland areas, where there are no work opportunities and therefore no opportunity to earn an income. They will therefore not be able to care for their families. That will be the result.

It will simply mean that tens of thousands of workers will immediately, as a result of this legislation, be fired by their employers. We submit that this will have a cruel effect on these people. It will result in them losing their employment and their income, which will have tremendous socioeconomic effects for them and their families. I am convinced that the hon. the Deputy Minister is not aware of these results and that he has not gone into the matter yet I do not believe that the hon. the Deputy Minister is aware of what the consequences could be. What he said was necessary in order to solve this problem was that the employers simply had to registered the employees. This, however, cannot be done, because in terms of the provisions of Government laws the majority of those employees cannot be registered.

Order. The registration of employees is not relevant here.

Mr. Chairman, surely it is simply the result of the laws of the hon. the Deputy Minister.

It is already in the existing Act.

It stems from the implementation of these increased fines.

That is not true.

Of course it is true. Not only is there an increased fine. The principle of a minimum fine of R500 for a minimum offence is also being laid down. A housewife may, for example, employ a servant whose services are absolutely essential for that family. There may be someone who needs the services of a servant because of illness or other circumstances. It may be a servant who has been looking after the children of a family for years. That housewife now has to run the risk of receiving a minimum fine of R500. It is not because she committed a crime …

Of course it is a crime.

Is it a crime to employ someone?

If she does not register her servant, it is a crime.

The hon. member for Newcastle regards it as a crime if a South African employs a fellow South African.

Order! That is not relevant.

Mr. Chairman, it may not be relevant…

Then the hon. member should stop mentioning it.

It illustrates the cruelty of this Bill.

Order!

Mr. Chairman, I do not believe that the imposition of this increased fine has anything to do with the motivation suggested by the hon. the Deputy Minister. It has nothing to do with the protection of the so-called urban Black unemployed. Nor has it anything to do with the protection of the so-called urban Black unemployed. Nor has it anything to do with the regulation of the situation between employer and employee. I am convinced that it has everything to do with the desperate attempt on the part of this Government to force Black employees out of the urban areas and back to the homeland areas in order to try, to some extent, to give effect to their ideological policy of separate development. [Interjections.]

I think that this must be brought to the specific attention of the hon. the Deputy Minister. He is not prepared to delete this clause. He is not prepared to accept the amendment of the hon. member for Houghton. That recommendation is reasonable and was moved simply to ensure a little humanity, decency and compassion in the implementation of this provision. The Government, however, is not prepared to accept this reasonable recommendation and argument of the hon. member for Houghton. I want to state very specifically that this Government says every day that its aim is to bring about better race relations in South Africa. But the increased fines will merely contribute to the further disruption of race relations in South Africa, it will lead to greater resistance and will cause affliction and hardship among the Blacks of South Africa. At the same time the efforts of the Government to improve race relations will be tremendously handicapped and that merely because the hon. the Deputy Minister is not prepared to reconsider this clause or to accept the reasonable suggestion of the hon. member for Houghton.

Mr. Chairman, while we welcome the announcement and the assurance by the hon. the Deputy Minister that he will make registration easier, I want to appeal to him once more on this question of the increased penalty. I want to sketch for him the sort of scenario which can arise, which, I believe, can very easily arise, if we allow this clause before us to be accepted. I want to suggest the scenario where a person is convicted for the second time, and is fined and can perhaps not pay the fine of R500. That means that he receives a sentence of imprisonment. Now, we know that this country is subjected to unfavourable Press reports overseas.

I want to put it to the hon. the Deputy Minister that this sort of picture could develop, if we accept this fine, that overseas newspapers could publish a photograph of some woman householder convicted and fined R500 for having employed someone illegally for the second time. She cannot pay that fine and is now sent to gaol. We all know what newspapers do. They could publish a picture of that woman and a picture of the person who was illegally employed. The sort of footline that they will put to this sort of report is that this is what happens in South Africa. In South Africa a reckless driver could kill two people and be fined less than R500, but if one employs Blacks in South Africa when they are without a job one can be fined more than that reckless driver who has been responsible for the loss of life.

I want to use that argument. It is an emotional argument. However I want to use it in order to point out to that hon. Deputy Minister the sort of situation which he is creating if he insists on this increased penalty. It is an absolutely valid comparison to make, and I ask him whether he wants to put us in the situation in which we can be exposed to that kind of appalling publicity overseas.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Berea, as well as other hon. members, referred to the question of imprisonment which may be imposed on employers who contravene this provision. However, it is very clear that the fine for the first conviction is a maximum of R500. For the second conviction, however, the fine is a minimum of R500. [Interjections.] Now the hon. member simply assumes that a person who is being charged for the first time, has been convicted for the second time. [Interjections.]

There is just one thing I want to bring to the attention of hon. members of the Opposition and with that I want to content myself. Here in the Western Cape we have experienced a situation of great unemployment, a situation coupled with a considerable influx of illegal people. We thrashed out the matter over a period of months. I myself was present when the hon. the Minister addressed representatives of all the bodies involved in the employment of people, in the auditorium of the H. F. Verwoerd building. They were all agreed that, to bring about an organized and ordered pattern here, it was necessary to raise the fine. In fact, they made an appeal to the hon. the Minister to increase the fine. I can give hon. members the assurance that tremendous pressure was even exerted on the hon. the Minister. Some people even wanted the fine to be raised to R1 000.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister referred to the situation here in the Western Cape. He also referred to certain bodies that deliberated in the auditorium of the H. F. Verwoerd Building to work out the system. I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister which bodies those were. [Interjections.]

Order! That is not relevant at all.

If this penal provision is implemented, every single farmer in the Western Cape …

Order! The hon. member must confine himself to the clause.

Mr. Chairman … [Interjections.]

Order! I rule that all of us now confine ourselves to the clause.

Mr. Chairman, the fine for the illegal employment of people already amounts to R100. Now the minimum fine is being increased to R500. In Western Cape the situation is that there are many unregistered workers. We live with that as we live with sunshine and rain. [Interjections.] If people are not prepared to run this risk, the labour problems in the Western Cape will increase tremendously.

Order! Labour problems in the Western Cape are not relevant now. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: We are dealing with section 10bis of the Act, which is to be amended. It deals with an employer in a prescribed area who illegally employs someone. The amending clause seeks to increase the prescribed fine as stipulated in the said section of the Act. The hon. member for Wynberg is trying to talk about labour in a prescribed area.

Order! That measure was accepted in the previous Bill. The only thing under discussion now is the fine of R500.

And the amendment.

And the amendment, of course. However, the amendment has nothing to do with the labour situation in the Western Cape.

But it might have.

Order! The hon. member for Wynberg may proceed.

Mr. Chairman, I am trying to point out what the effect of this R500 fine is going to be on employers here in the Western Cape. The hon. the Deputy Minister said that if a person is employed illegally, he must be registered. What is of importance, is that it simply cannot be done. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Wynberg must resume his seat.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how it is possible for us to discuss this clause without referring to the effects thereof? That is exactly what the hon. member for Wynberg …

Order! The hon. member for Wynberg has tried to discuss registration of labourers. I am not prepared to allow him to do that.

But Mr. Chairman, one gets fined if one employs somebody who is not registered. We are now discussing whether it is possible to register or not.

Order! I have given my ruling. Hon. members must abide by that.

I must say that is a very unreasonable ruling, Sir.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to address you briefly on the effects of the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton. I also want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to give more than serious consideration to the moratorium that has been requested in that amendment. It is urgent that the hon. the Deputy Minister should consider this not only as a carte blanche moratorium, but as a genuine moratorium in terms of which people who have been employed by the same employer for a minimum period of six months will be entitled to the privileges of that moratorium. In order for the moratorium to be effective, should it be accepted, it would mean that the various labour registration bureaux should be permitted to register these people who until now could not have registered. They could not have registered in terms of current legislation.

That is our point.

We are merely trying to legalize an already existing situation. It can be effected by way of the moratorium as suggested in the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton. That is why it is so necessary for the hon. the Deputy Minister to consider it in this particular light. That is what we are asking him to do.

Mr. Chairman, I want to raise a technical matter relating to clause 6, which I mentioned in my Second Reading speech. Section 38 of the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, is the section which empowers the Minister to make regulations. Subsection (3) of this section reads, inter alia, that—

In clause 6, a new regulations (nA) is proposed to be inserted, followed by regulation (o). I cannot understand why this new regulation is referred to as (nA). I want to submit that regulation (nA) should in fact be regulation (o) and that regulation (o) should become regulation (oA). I therefore move the following amendments—

1. (1) On page 4, in line 45, to omit “(nA)” and to substitute “(o)”;
2. (2) on page 4, in line 51, to omit “(o)” and to substitute “(oA)”

Section 38(3)(n) prohibits the carrying, by Blacks, of any knobkerries or dangerous weapons. I hardly see that the power to supply electricity and thereafter to lay down tariffs can have anything to do with knobkerries. I think it would be far better to retain the reference to knobkerries in section 38(3)(n) as it stands and to insert a new provision in respect of the supplying of electricity, in accordance with the amendment I have moved.

As we have mentioned at Second Reading, the hon. the Deputy Minister has failed to reply to the question of the actual implementation of this clause, which is primarily aimed at supplying electricity to an area like Soweto. The hon. the Deputy Minister will remember that we asked him to account to this House for the fact that the estimated cost of electrifying and reticulating Soweto, which was initially R60 million, has now increased to R150 million. We want to know what steps the hon. the Deputy Minister is taking to make it possible for this clause to become effective and to ensure that sufficient funds are voted by this Government to supply reticulation in Soweto.

Mr. Chairman, a short while ago we attended a function of the hon. the Deputy Minister in the H. F. Verwoerd Building across the road. Those of us who were there that evening were impressed by some of the schemes outlined to us during the course of the evening. In some of the schemes of the department use is made of self-help in the building of homes for Africans in certain areas. This clause relates to the supply of electricity and water. Following, to a certain extent, upon what the hon. member for Hillbrow said about the enormous escalation of costs over the last few years, I want to put a suggestion to the hon. the Minister in relation to the services which are to be provided. We know that these services are expensive and that very often the skilled people needed to supply these services are in great demand. This is why the time taken is sometimes very much longer than anticipated. I should like to put it to the hon. the Deputy Minister that self-help could be extended, on an experimental basis, when the services we are contemplating here are provided in areas where there are large number of unemployed Blacks, many of whom could be employed on a part-time basis to do the unskilled groundwork. I want to put it to the hon. the Deputy Minister that this possibility should be considered and discussed with officials of his department, because we know that the Urban Foundation is so far the only group which is busy with relief-work schemes. These schemes have been successful, and I believe that some of the guidelines which have been established in that respect could well be used to assist in schemes like this. I believe it would be to the advantage of the department, in terms of saving, to investigate such a scheme.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to support the amendment of the hon. member for Hillbrow in relation to the relettering of paragraph (nA). I think the hon. member for Hillbrow has presented a very strong case. Things like knobkerries really do not have any bearing on things like electricity. I think he has a good point, because it is quite apparent that electricity belongs inside the houses while knobkerries belong outside the houses. So I do want to support him. I think that the relettering of this paragraph will really make this a much neater piece of legislation. I hope the Deputy Minister will very seriously consider this.

Mr. Chairman, I am afraid that hon. members are confusing cudgels and power again. All that this clause is requiring, is that where the existing regulations in respect of water and power are applicable only to the tariffs, there can be an extension of the regulations by means of other regulations which are required during the construction, and which may add certain other things. I can give a good example of that. The building industry requires certain regulations and these provisions are being specially inserted with a view to Soweto, so that the community council of Soweto may receive certain powers. Then regulations may be made in terms of which the planning the provision of water and electricity can be arranged. In terms of the existing regulations the water and the power are provided from another source. However, to transfer the regulations to the Soweto community council it is necessary to insert the provision. Therefore it has nothing to do with anything else.

Mr. Chairman, I have no quarrel with what the hon. the Deputy Minister has said. I agree 100% with what he has said. All I ask is that the letters numbering the various provisions be changed to give the clause more sense and meaning. It cannot be attached to (n) because (n) deals with knobkerries. We support the hon. the Deputy Minister fully, but let us introduce a new paragraph (o) which will deal with the supply of electricity and then the second part of the paragraph will be (oA) which will deal with water. We will then have a completely new paragraph (oA) dealing with the distribution of electricity and water and it will have nothing to do with the other sort of “krag”, knobkerries and other dangerous weapons. The “krag” will merely be the supplying of electricity.

There can be electric knobkerries.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to accommodate the hon. member and consequently I shall go into this matter. At this stage I cannot perceive what value it has. But if it will satisfy the hon. member, and if it can be done in that way, I shall do so in the Other Place.

Thank you, in that case I shall withdraw my amendments.

Amendments, with leave, withdrawn.

Clause agreed to.

Clause 10:

Mr. Chairman, we talked about this clause during the Second Reading debate and I do not want to repeat all the arguments which I used then. We in these benches believe that there should be one system of taxation for everybody in South Africa, irrespective of colour, and we believe that people should pay according to their means, according to their ability to pay. Although this clause to some extent reduces the disparity in taxation rates between Whites, Coloureds and Asians on the one hand and Black people on the other hand, it by no means removes that disparity. We are not going to vote against the clause, because it is an improvement, as I said yesterday, but I do want the hon. the Deputy Minister to bear in mind that the time has come when all disparity in taxation systems must be wiped out. Yesterday the hon. the Deputy Minister spoke about the difficulty of tracking down 3 million Black taxpayers in order to get them to pay their taxes. I cannot see that there is any difference in tracking down 3 million Black taxpayers who start paying tax once their taxable income exceeds R1 200 or 3 million Black taxpayers who start paying tax once their taxable income exceeds R3 000. The technical difficulty remains anyway and whether the tax rate starts at a lower or a higher rate, one has to discover the income-earner, discover what his income is and then see whether he is paying the amount of taxation which he is meant to pay. With those few words I leave the clause at that.

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

It would have the effect of making it possible for the hon. the Deputy Minister to authorize repayment of a certain amount of tax which has been deducted from these people. In terms of this clause, which raises the liability to pay tax on the part of Black people from R360 to R1 200, is deemed to come into affect at the beginning of March. I stated my case to the hon. the Deputy Minister last night. I hope that he will say that it is possible for him to accept the amendment. However, I should just like to draw to his attention the fact that while the amendment mentions the months of March, April and May, it may well be that June will also have to be taken into consideration. I just want to put this to the hon. the Deputy Minister.

Mr. Chairman, I shall first reply to the hon. member for Mooi River’s amendment. I just want to tell the hon. member that in reality it is physically impossible. According to statistics, there are 3 039 000 Black taxpayers. We receive only an amount of what employees have paid. We do not have individual records at all. Therefore to trace particulars in this regard is a physical impossibility.

Then there is the question of the months. The hon. member will understand that we were not able to anticipate the budget. The hon. the Minister of Finance introduced his budget in which he made this announcement on 28 March 1979. Since then we have worked out the tables. These were then distributed and notice was given that this would come into operation with effect from 1 May. Since 1 May there have consequently been no deductions or charges.

Only the two months.

Only those two months. Our greatest problem is that the amendment of the hon. member creates a physically impossible situation. I do not think it is asking all that much of the hon. member to accept it.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the problem of the hon. member for Houghton. I can assure her that the matter has been raised. There is an understanding with the hon. the Minister of Finance that this is only a phase to full parity.