Mr. Speaker, before the House adjourned yesterday evening I told the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that I was quite prepared to consult with him on matters of common interest. In the spirit in which he offered his co-operation, I am also prepared to co-operate with him. Having said this I want to leave the matter at that.

In the speech with which he elucidated the no-confidence motion, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also alleged that the Government had created expectations and made promises. Furthermore he said that we now had to keep our promises. On what are these so-called expectations that were created and these so-called promises that were made, and to which I shall come later, based?

In the first place, shortly after the opportunity had presented itself, shortly after the Parliamentary session, I made it my task to undertake an extensive journey to every corner of this country in order to acquaint myself with the living conditions of our own people. But that was not all. I also visited many factories in which White workers as well as those of other population groups were working. I also went out of my way to visit the national States after I had concluded an agreement with their leaders earlier last year. If this means that expectations were created, I am now asking him: What should I have done? Should I have stayed away so as not to create those expectations? It was in fact my duty. In the capacity in which I am serving, I, together with the Minister concerned and his officials, had to ascertain what the prevailing circumstances were and had to conduct on-the-spot discussions with the leaders so that they could inform me and show me what we discuss from time to time when we meet. No expectations were created in this way. It was a promise that was fulfilled.

In the second place the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to certain statements I had made. I shall deal with them later. I did make appeals to this country, as I said last night. I also made a specific appeal to my own people. At my party’s congresses I spoke frankly and honestly. I said that I believed that the only way in which goodwill could be established between the population groups in South Africa was for us to tolerate and respect one another. Consequently I also made an appeal to my party to act in this spirit, and I made such an appeal to them with good reason because the party to which I belong primarily represents a nation whose outlook on life is based on the Christian philosophy. What is wrong with pointing that out to them? If this is the creation of expectations, what else should I have done?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said I have an almost superhuman task. He probably said that because he wanted to imply in that way that I have to deal with these matters alone. But this superhuman task cannot be accomplished by one person. Even if he were to be placed in that position, he would not be able to do it alone. It is a task that can only be accomplished by means of team-work, and that team-work must not be on this side of the House only. It does exist in this Cabinet and in this party, but as far as is humanly possible, that team-work should also operate across the floor of this House. That is why I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition today, and I do not believe it will be in vain, or I trust that it will not be. I ask him to join us in fighting the negativism that exists in our democracy. Justified, constructive critism is always welcome. After all, no one can claim to be perfect. In a democratic dispensation an opposition is necessary to set the Government straight and to keep it on its toes.

I welcome this, but in all democracies—and this is recognized by authorities—there is, in fact, an unpleasant spirit of negativism which very easily overcomes an Opposition, and it is that negativism which leads to the weakening of the democracy in the face of the onslaught of the dictatorships. I trust the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will join us in keeping vigil to ensure that Parliament is not used for negativism, but for constructive criticism.

In addition the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred at the beginning of his speech to the socio-economic problems facing us in this country. I do not want to minimize these problems for one moment. In fact, I want to say that the problematical aspects raised by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and which differed from the facts gleaned from Government sources, are minimal. He need only examine the printed reports, for example the economic plan for the next two years, “A Strategy for the Future”, to mention only one. On examining it he will find that most of the problems raised and described by him have already been dealt with in documents which the Government is perusing. The reason for this is the co-operation that exists between the various Government bodies and the Economic Advisory Council. Consequently, we are aware of the problems. However, one cannot simply say “abracadabra!” and everything is over.

That can be done with apartheid.

Mr. Speaker, the proof that we are dealing with this matter is the process for the rationalization of the public service which we have set in motion because one can only deal with these growing problems facing South Africa by means of a properly organized co-ordinated and effective Public Service. At a later stage I shall also have more to say about that.

In the third place, the Government has established the Manpower Commission, which has already begun to perform its task with regard to aspects of manpower development which require attention. In the fourth place, the Government went out of its way last year to do what has not been done anywhere else by any democratic Government, and that was to convene a representative meeting of the entire private sector, comprising all political persuasions, and to hold discussions with them for a whole day on joint action by the State and the private sector in order to achieve certain objectives. It was a huge success. We did not try to make use of the meeting in the Carlton Centre for party-political gain. In that spirit consultations were held on that day, and we are doing follow-up work in order to put the general spirit that prevailed there into effect. Thus we are still working on these problems. There is no reason for no confidence. There is reason to have confidence.

At a later stage I shall discuss other arguments of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition as I proceed with what I have to say.

The hon. member for Durban Point raised a few matters which I want to dwell on briefly. He said I should now say where I stood in respect of the word “apartheid”. The hon. member has probably forgotten that I furnished him with a reply to that question last year already. I am not going to repeat it now. He must simply read the Hansard.

It was not a reply.

But, Sir, surely I cannot furnish the reply the hon. member wants me to furnish. He cannot even exert sufficient influence on his own party to keep them together. The hon. member must simply go and read what I said to him last year, and I shall repeat it: For years now the best intentions of this side of the House have been held up to the world by successive political opponents and by hostile elements as being a tyranny which destroys other people. I say that that image of apartheid is dead. I said so last year and I repeat it now.

The hon. member complained about the refusal of the NP to give evidence before the Schlebusch Commission. But why was the Schlebusch Commission appointed? Inter alia, it was appointed precisely in order to discuss a proposal submitted by the NP Government. Apparently the hon. member does not know that a draft bill is before the Commission. [Interjections.]

Furthermore the hon. member has a grievance against the “Local Authorities Amendment Ordinance”. He is angry now and demands a reply from me during the course of this debate. I shall try to reply to him briefly on the matter. At a later stage he can take up the matter with the hon. the Minister of the Interior. There will be an opportunity for that. However, I want to tell him that the chairman of the Natal Association for Local Governments declared in his evidence before the Schlebusch Commission that his association had not accepted and signed the report from which the ordinance originated.

The chairman did sign it.

He declared before the Commission that he did not sign it.

He did sign it.

In that case the hon. member must settle the question of who is speaking the truth with that chairman. But he declared before the Schlebusch Commission that he had not signed it.

The previous chairman…

In the second place, during discussion on 4 February between the hon. the Minister of the Interior and the Executive Committee of Natal, at which the Administrator and the members of the Executive Committee were present, a decision was reached to await the Yeld and Browne reports before there were any further deliberations on this matter.

Once again they did not know.

The hon. member does not know what is going on in his party. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Simonstown …

Oh, you switch off now!

Does the hon. member want me to speak to him all afternoon? [Interjections.] I want to tell the hon. member for Simonstown that, of course, I do not agree with everything he said.

He is too verkramp.

I think he exaggerated many things in his speech, yet there are certain matters on which I agree with him. I concur with him that too many attempts are being made by the outside world to interfere in the domestic affairs of South Africa. We are not a colony of some country. South Africa is a sovereign, independent country which will no more tolerate interference in her domestic affairs than any other sovereign, independent countries will. Last year we did not hesitate to give people who did so their marching orders. The hon. member knows what I am referring to. I should like to express the friendly warning in the gentlest possible tone, that people who meddle with matters for which they are not here, may find that at times they leave this country more rapidly than they entered it. In that respect I believe I have the co-operation of the whole Parliament.

I want to come back to the atmosphere that has been created here, over the past few weeks in particular, that I had ostensibly created certain expectations that were unnatural and which I now have to satisfy if I do not want to cause a catastrophe. This is more or less the refrain. An eminent European statesman once said that to govern is to lead the people together on a path of life in a particular direction to a goal. In my opinion this is the acceptance and realization of a total, national strategy. I admit that it is more difficult to have a total national strategy formulated and accepted in a democracy than under a dictatorship, for in a dictatorship one can impose it from above, but in a democracy one must try, once it has been devised and formulated, to bring it home to the people by means of persuasion. However, certain considerations make the acceptance of such a total national strategy of the utmost importance in South Africa and these are, firstly, the ideal of stability, because the living conditions of no single person in this country, whether White, Brown, Black or Yellow can be adequately improved, in whatever sphere, if there is no stability, orderly government and orderly development. In the second place a national strategy must take into account the fundamental principle also recognized by the UN in its Charter, i.e. that a nation, however small it is, has a right to self-determination. The history of the party I represent is built on that. This was one of its foundation stones. It was born out of desire to obtain self-determination for its own people and it has realized this consistently. In the third place a national strategy must take into account each individual’s natural urge for freedom.

This is then the course we are attempting to seek in the formulation and the realization of a national strategy. In South Africa, however, we are faced by a dilemma and this dilemma is that we have to maintain effective and orderly government on the one hand and have to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of people on the other. This is our problem and no one on this side of the House is unaware of it. Whoever underestimates these ideals in his own life and in the lives of other peoples cannot lead people on a path of life to a goal. What that goal should be, I have quoted in the words of a European statesman. This presupposes that day after day one should strive, with the aid of one’s machinery of State, but with the assistence of others as well, to attain the objects of the State so as to be in a position to ward off the onslaught that is more intense now than ever before. An atmosphere must be created in which the living conditions of the peoples of the Republic of South Africa can improve. This is our object, and I state it candidly here today. If this were not our object, I would not have been participating in it. However, let me say this now: I am prepared to accept the consequences of my own actions, but I am not prepared to accept the consequences of a putative meaning attached to my actions by others with ulterior motives. The party of which I am a member and which did me the honour of making me their leader, is not a party of stagnation. It has never been one: Since 1915 the National Party has never been an inflexible party, one sitting in the middle of the stream on a lot of flotsam, allowing the stream to flow past it. I grew up on the plains of the Free State, along the Sand River. The Sand River does not always have water in it, but when it does have water, it comes down in torrents. I often stood and watched how the wall of water came down …

We only hope you will not get too much water today.

Just keep your big mouth shut! [Interjections.] He is one of those things to which I have just referred. I have already seen a baboon sitting on that flotsam not knowing where to jump off. He does not know where the flotsam is going to take him. The National Party is not like that. The National Party is a creative party. The National Party is a party of renewal and development.

You must learn how to control yourself.

Order!

I did not refer to the hon. member; in any event he does not understand what I am talking about. However, since the hon. member has interrupted me, I want to tell him that he should read Langenhoven. He says: You should not approach anyone with your back turned to him; he may think that you look like that from all angles! [Interjections.] Not a single one of my predecessors on the National Party side, whether General Hertzog, Dr. Malan, Mr. Strijdom, Dr. Verwoerd or my immediate predecessor Mr. Vorster, believed in stagnation, in standing still.

He was a crook.

Repeat what you said!

I said Mr. Vorster was a crook.

Only a crook would say that. [Interjections.] I object most strongly to that hon. member’s reference to Mr. Vorster. [Interjections.]

May I address you on a point of order? Is the hon. the Prime Minister permitted to refer to an hon. member on this side of the House as a “crook”?

Order! The hon. member for Sandton must withdraw those words which he used regarding Mr. Vorster.

Sir, because you ask it, I withdraw it.

Order! I say the hon. member must withdraw those words about Mr. Vorster.

I have just done so, Mr. Speaker.

No, the hon. member has not done so. The hon. member must rise to his feet and withdraw the words.

I withdraw them, Sir.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order …

Order! In that case I should be pleased if the hon. the Prime Minister too would withdraw the word “crook”.

Since the hon. member has withdrawn what he said so unreasonably about my predecessor, I too shall withdraw what I said.

Order! Hon. members must please listen to me now otherwise I may eventually be compelled to disallow all interjections. This privilege must be used with great circumspection and goodwill. The hon. the Prime Minister may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order …

Order! I have already said that the hon. the Prime Minister may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, may I have your ruling on whether or not the hon. the Prime Minister must withdraw his words?

Order! The matter has been disposed of and the hon. the Prime Minister may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order …

Order! I am allowing no further point of order. The hon. member must please resume his seat.

Mr. Speaker, to assist you I shall take no further notice of any interjections from that quarter.

Do you think that you are talking to the Coloureds and the Indians?

Order!

No, I am talking to their adviser. None of my esteemed predecessors advocated stagnation, but they did advocate orderly renewal and development. I want to quote a few passages in order to prove what I have said here, how since 1948 these leaders have made clear statements and taken definite steps to bring these matters to fruition. I should like to quote one or two of Dr. Malan’s statements. On the evening he accepted the mantle of Prime Minister when his party came into power, he said—

On another occasion he was addressing students and he then said, inter alia—

These were some of his statements, and he lived accordingly. I knew him. He was a man without hatred.

Allow me to quote Dr. Strijdom, a man who is made out to be a radical who believed in nothing beyond serving his own people. As Prime Minister he spoke about Africa and said, inter alia—

Therefore he declared himself to be in favour of an African policy based on reconciliation and good neighbourliness. Dr. Verwoerd once said the following—

These are the ideals which he cherished for this country.

Then there was Mr. Vorster, my immediate predecessor. I quote him—

Now the impression is being created here that once I had become Prime Minister I suddenly turned my back on these clear guidelines which had been laid down by my predecessors. This is being said for party-political purposes. It is being said to stir up mischief because people know no other way of stemming this flood of nationalism.

That is not true.

Therefore it is a transparent game to try to play me off against my esteemed predecessors, and I am not going to be part of it. I am continuing the work of renewal. I am continuing the work of development which they began and with which they came a long way.

I do not think that you think the way Mr. Strijdom did.

I can see that you do not think. [Interjections.]

I say there is a difference.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition quoted passages dealing with my standpoint on discrimination. He said that he wanted a clear standpoint from me on this. I want to put a very clear standpoint to him. We have never yet flinched from the idea that we will gradually remove unnecessary, injurious, discriminatory measures. We have never yet flinched from that.

[Inaudible.]

I have quoted to you what Dr. Verwoerd said.

You need not apologize.

I have quoted to you … I am dealing with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition now. If he would keep that mob behind him under control, I could continue to speak to him. [Interjections.]

Touchy!

This is Parliament.

We gave examples of where we …

Order! This is indeed Parliament. A debate is taking place across the floor of the House; not a debate by way of interjections. That is why I want to take the hon. member for Yeoville to task. He must give the hon. the Prime Minister a chance to proceed.

Mr. Speaker, allow me to mention a few examples. All these things are being disparaged now. I see that a report is even being published in America which says that all these things are of little consequence. But surely we did not create these peoples in South Africa. Surely they were already there. Surely they came into existence through an historical process. Surely we did not create the backlog in civilization and in living conditions which existed here either. We inherited these things from a colonial era. After all, the backlog which exists amongst Black and Coloured people in this country, dates from a colonial era, and the nation that I represent, had to struggle to get where it is today. We were not given these things for nothing. I now put it to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that if discriminatory measures exist, we cannot dissociate them from the past. We cannot dissociate them from circumstances that were created in the course of history.

We can remove them.

Allow me to give one example of a heritage from the colonial period, viz. the “Masters and Servants Act”. We are not the ones who placed that law on the Statute Book. It was placed on the Statute Book during the colonial period, and that was in fact done by the liberals.

By Cecil John Rhodes’ people.

Yes, and we had to remove it, and that was a tremendous step forward in the elimination of humiliating discrimination.

What about the Group Areas Act?

Order! The hon. member for Bryanston will have the opportunity of putting his case when he has a chance to speak later this week. He must be careful with his interjections now.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order …

I am not listening to any further points of order.

I want to give a second example, one with which I was directly involved. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition will remember the wrangle over the Nico Malan opera house. This was an excellent example of a case where one could not grant equality and equal rights to communities because of the cost involved and because of the fact that the community which felt slighted in this case, did not have the same facilities, means and people to have a large-scale share in a theatre of this kind. We faced up to the fact and took the necessary steps to eliminate offensive discrimination there, because I believed—and I still do—that it had nothing to do with the survival of the nation to which I belong.

I notice that international hotels are mentioned in the report which is being published in America. Surely this is progress, viz. that we gave special attention to international hotels and made it possible to accommodate people in South Africa in a way which takes human dignity into account? I am simply giving a few examples. I can mention the example of the hon. the Minister of Community Development who took a certain step last year after it had been carefully weighed up by the Government. We said that we did not want to create disorder, because our country has various population groups that we must take into account. He said he was prepared to take steps in regard to specific public places which would eliminate this feeling of being hurt and humiliated. Surely that was progress. Now the question is being asked: “But if you qualify this by simply saying ‘unnecessary, hurtful discrimination’ then what is necessary discrimination?” I shall tell you what is necessary in my opinion: Whatever is necessary to preserve the concept of “good neighbourliness”. If I have a neighbour and there is a dividing line between us, it does not necessarily mean, although we may be very good friends, and get along very well with one another, that he can usurp various rights for himself in my home. I say that we must be in a position to exercise that necessary discrimination in South Africa. To illustrate this I want to tell you that I have the right to protect my people and the community life of my communities in their schools and their churches, and I shall not deviate from that; I am prepared to fight for it.

Hear, hear!

My community has the right to educate its children in its own language and in its own circumstances. These are the necessary forms of separation which form the basis of good neighbourliness. Sir, I want to tell you that if one discusses this subject with a self-respecting Black man, he understands it. I have spoken to them. Most of the Black leaders whom we deal with, are self-respecting people. When one speaks to them, they understand this.

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

No, Sir. The hon. member may speak later on. I want to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition: South Africa is accused of being “an unjust society”. On the basis of its allegedly being an unjust society, what are being clamoured for in the first place are drastic changes. Unfortunately, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is joining in this clamour, but I hope that he will stop doing so, because he knows better. If he tries to sing in that choir, he is going to sing out of tune.

What choir are you talking about?

The >choir that sings about the “unjust society”. It is an ugly choir. Let the unruly lot carry on without him. [Interjections.] I have something else to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Some church circles, some members of the media in this country and some politicians are prompting and encouraging young people not to fight for South Africa because the South African society is allegedly an unjust one. Certain people are making an organized attempt to jeopardize the security services of this country, to weaken them, on the basis of this story that it is an unjust society which they are being required to defend. All sorts of underhand methods and sanctimoniousness are being evinced, not by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, but by some of these people. Now I want to ask: What if they should succeed? What if those people should succeed in depriving the Defence Force of national servicemen? What if they should succeed in weakening our security services and Russia should succeed in establishing its form of society. Where would the “just society” be then? [Interjections.] Do not tell me that this is not an argument. After all, this is what we are fighting against. We are fighting against Russia, its satellites and its minions. [Interjections.] Let us test this accusation that it is allegedly an “unjust society” that exists in South Africa. Where is there greater freedom of worship than in South Africa? Mention a single country in the world that is accredited at the UN in which there is greater freedom of worship, for minority groups as well, than in South Africa? There is no such country. There may be countries that are just as free, but there is not a single country where there is greater freedom of worship than we have here. In the S.A. Defence Force, which is now being undermined by these people, more than 100 denominations are represented. We have provided for their spiritual ministration—all of them. In spite of that we are being accused of being an unjust society. Is it not disgraceful!

Let us take freedom of the Press. Another story is that the Press is not free. However, the mere fact that the Press can carry on to such an extent surely proves that it is free, because where does one have a Press that writes more about exactly what it wishes than ours?

And more nonsense too.

And some of them more nonsense? The Press is so free that a leading South African recently remarked to me: “Only one thing can destroy real freedom in South Africa and that is the irresponsible section of the Press.” If the Press does not consider itself free because it is expected to act within the limits of the security laws of the country, I ask myself: Is there no Press legislation in other countries as well? I have here a summary of a whole lot of Press legislation that exists in other countries, democratic countries of the world, legislation which is just as stringent in some respects, even more stringent and more direct, than the Press legislation that we have in South Africa. There are democratic countries in the Western World in which there is specific Press legislation.

It is the primary responsibility of any Government to ensure that the security of the State is maintained at all times. Accusations are made against us at the UN, especially by countries from the Third World. When we look at the countries represented at the UN, I want to ask how many of those who accuse us have Press freedom themselves. None of those who accuse us have this. Is it not time we began to spell out these things to the world? What a help it would be if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, with the reasonable attitude he has adopted, would add his voice to mine and say: “Please stop this nonsense. It is not true.”

I want to give a further example in connection with this “unjust society”. Where in the world is there a legal system which is more independent of the executive than the one we have in South Africa?

†Naturally, Sir, I do not claim that we have attained the perfect society in this country. That is not possible this side of the grave.

Furthermore, we protect minorities. We have to protect them in this country: their cultures, their traditions, etc. We have many minorities in this country, not only the Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking sections, the Coloureds and the Indians, but also Italians, Greeks and Portuguese—all of them are protected to live according to their rights and cultures in South Africa.

*I have spoken to some of them and they tell me: “We are much happier here than we would be in our countries of origin.” How then do we explain the dreadful things which are supposed to happen in this unjust society, the things which our political opponents sometimes lay at our door?

†Part of our freedom in this country is the right to acknowledge and encourage our industries and commerce to operate within a free-market economy. That is what we are protecting when we fight for South Africa We make an exception in the case of strategic industries. That has always been the case. It has been the case for decades in this country. It is true that we object to and oppose the idea of undermining our State. The security of the State must be protected in the interests of all of us. Our security laws do not, in essence, go further than those obtaining in Northern Ireland and Western Germany in the fight against terrorism.

*I have here the provisions which are in force in Northern Ireland. I shall give them to any hon. member to examine. I also have those of India, Canada and the United Kingdom. When one examines them, one finds that they all contain some provision corresponding to those which people seize upon to allege that we do not have a free society in South Africa.

How many people have been banned in Canada lately?

That is not the point. The point is that those countries also have similar legislation. However, that does not turn them into police States. The hon. member should rather tell us how his little boy got on with Buthelezi. [Interjections.]

Our economy is part of the freedom and opportunities of the citizenry. I want to say to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that unlike large parts of Africa, we are experiencing an economic revival. Our country, this so-called unjust society in which there is supposed to be no freedom and in which people are supposed to be leading a wretched existence, is experiencing an economic revival, but in Zambia, one of our accusers, and in Angola, one of the countries that threaten us, and in Mozambique conditions are miserable. There people lead a wretched life. Our growth rate is rising more rapidly than those of many Western countries. [Interjections.] The Opposition does not like that. Our agricultural prospects are good, in spite of the drought. Our mining industry maintains a high level. Our manufacturing production is increasing more rapidly than before. The building industry is improving. Consumer expenditure is increasing satisfactorily and exports are rising rapidly. This community, of which it is said that people should not fight for it, is able to feed itself and to export food to other countries as well. However, we are alleged to be the enemies of freedom, the people one should not fight for. It is disgraceful to allow people to go so far as to slander their own country for their own petty party-political gain and their hypocritical and hostile plans.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Prime Minister which hon. member on this side of the House has said that he would not fight for South Africa?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that we should create a just society. I want to say to him that people sit behind him in this country who are undermining national service on the grounds that we are supposedly not a just society. Has the hon. member not been following my argument? [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, is it proper for the hon. the Prime Minister to say that behind the hon. the Leader of the Opposition sit people who are undermining national service? That is a criminal offence, and the hon. the Prime Minister is therefore accusing hon. members on this side of the House of committing a criminal offence. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. the Prime Minister said nothing of the sort.

[Inaudible.]

Order!

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member for Yeoville thinks I was referring to him or any other hon. member, he is making a very serious mistake. I was referring to the forces I have already mentioned.

The hon. the Prime Minister was not referring to any hon. member of this House.

Mr. Speaker, I have already mentioned them. Shall I mention them again? They come from some church circles, from some sections of the media, and young people are even encouraged by some politicians not to fight for South Africa. [Interjections.] We shall identify quite a number of them in the course of the defence debate, and your ears will be red! [Interjections.] I want to ask the hon. member for Yeoville, since he is sitting there so sanctimoniously, whether he has not been forced to speak out against this among the young Progs?

Sir, the hon. the Prime Minister was talking about people sitting behind the Leader of the Opposition.

Order! I have already given my ruling on that point.

The hon. member knows that he has already had to fight a battle about this matter. Does the hon. member wish to deny that he admitted this to me?

Sir, the hon. the Prime Minister said …

Order! I have already dealt with that matter.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition produced another example of how we allegedly discriminate against people and take action concerning matters in which they should be free to do as they please. He referred in this connection to the Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act. He referred to these as examples of this kind of thing. I want to tell him that the original representations for the passing of those laws did not arise spontaneously in Government circles. He can go and read up the history. That is why I reminded the Leader of the Opposition yesterday of the fact that there is not only one particular group of people in the country, but a diversity of groups. Pleas were made to the Government from church circles—this cannot be denied, because it is part of history—and from welfare organizations, and a petition with 250 000 signatures was submitted to this Parliament, asking for steps of this nature to be taken. The Immorality Act, too, is not a law which was passed by this Government, after all. It was passed as far back as 1929—if I remember correctly—and the United Party Government did not subsequently repeal it.

[Inaudible.]

No, wait a minute. I am only saying what happened. I now want to put the standpoint of the Cabinet. In the first place, the Immorality Act has a bearing on moral norms, norms which can be defended on moral grounds, because the State, if it has any integrity, has to guard against immorality. I hope the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will concede me that. I am talking now of the principle. In the second place, it is the standpoint of the Cabinet that this law is not intended to denigrate any group of people or to render them inferior to any other group. I can tell him that I have discussed this matter with many leaders from church circles and from other population groups and that I have explained the matter to them in these terms. They discussed it with me in a reasonable manner in my office and said that they now understood it. The Immorality Act is primarily intended—and this is a fact—to prevent non-White women from being exploited by unscrupulous White men. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows that this is true. This is a social evil, and if a State connives at this or knowingly allows it to happen, it is playing with one of its foundations. This is so. It can lead to a decline of moral standards and it can create bitterness between White and Coloured. I know quite a lot about this matter, because I handled the Coloured Affairs portfolio for years, and I remember the discussions I had with Coloured parents and Coloured teachers who think sensibly on these matters, and with Coloured clergymen. The fact is that it is not White women who are most frequently exploited, but underdeveloped Coloured women. As far as the future of the Immorality Act is concerned, I want to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that he knows, because he is an Afrikaner, that there are strong feelings among his people about these things. For that reason, in its handling of the Immorality Act, the Government cannot blindly heed the clamour which suggests that all will be over in South Africa if we repeal the Immorality Act. I said at the Cape congress of my party that there were professors who said that it should be abolished. However, these professors ponder these matters in their own circle. I have a high regard for academics and I have afforded them more opportunity to participate in consultations than any of my predecessors did. However, they cannot set the pace for us. We are dealing with a nation whose history shows us that it has been opposed to this kind of mixing for 300 years. By that I do not mean to imply that it is superior. Not at all, but it is a social evil to be reckoned with. I then said: Very well, let us retain the principle of combating immorality as such. Suggest improvements, submit proposals about how the law can be changed while still pursuing the same object. Submit proposals about how we can remove its hurtful elements, and I shall consider them on merit. I repeat this invitation today. More reasonable than that hon. members cannot expect me to be.

Have you received any suggestions?

No. I have not received any suggestions. What I have received are letters, which I can write too. I have not even received a suggestion from the hon. member for Groote Schuur about how we can improve this thing.

I was not at the Cape congress of your party.

My congress does not want us to abolish it summarily.

Let us now look at the Mixed Marriages Act. Do not quote Pik Botha and Hendrik Schoeman to me. They think the way I do. If we can combat immorality while removing from the law the hurtful things to which people refer, we are prepared to go into the matter. However, I am not going to take the responsibility upon me in this country for allowing these things to take place on a large scale to the detriment of the character of the State. Let us examine the Mixed Marriages Act.

Do not bother. There is no change. Do not deal with it.

Order!

The Act is of a completely different nature from that of the Immorality Act. I readily concede that to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. It is of a different nature. That is why it is implemented with compassion by the Minister concerned. I think we should implement this Act with compassion. This also gives rise to certain social consequences which cannot simply be ignored in a population structure such as the South African one. All I am asking the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is that we should consider these matters in a calm and reasoned manner and that we should not agitate about them. There are other beliefs and opinions on this subject in South Africa as well. Our country is divided on this.

Whom is this Act protecting?

The children.

Because there is sharp dissension, this matter must be considered in a calm and meaningful way. There is an inherent tendency in any nation to want to protect itself. I shall leave the matter at that. I think the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will agree with me that we should not adopt an unwise attitude towards this, but that we should take account of the conflicting feelings which exist on this subject in this country.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether he does not believe that these matters have become symbols of inferiority among people of colour, symbols of inferiority which may do great damage to our relations?

Yes, I think the hon. member for Durban Point is right. They have gradually been turned into symbols of injustice, while we should try to bring home to them that this is not so. We should try to bring home to them that this is not so and that they should not only think of themselves in this matter. They should also consider the feelings of others in this matter. This is of the utmost importance. I readily concede to the hon. member that this is so. The hon. member knows that he and I are not responsible for those feelings, but he also knows that there are forces in South Africa which are exploiting this kind of thing to the hilt in order to arouse criminal feelings in this country.

I should like to go further. I said at the beginning that we were fighting for freedom in this country, for the freedom of minorities to determine their own destiny. However, we are being threatened, and it is no use denying that. I want to dwell on this for a moment. A well-known strategist recently wrote—

It is because of this threat that I am seeking national unity among all South Africans. In 1977, President Podgorny paid a visit to Mozambique. While he was there, he expressed himself as follows in a public speech—

So there is a common purpose between the General Assembly of the UN and Russia, i.e. to bring about a revolution in South Africa, a violent revolution. The British Prime Minister has also referred to this matter. She has said—

These are the words of the present British Prime Minister. She says I am right in asserting that Southern Africa is on the list of priorities of these forces. There is a well-known newspaperman in South Africa who is at present the foreign correspondent of his newspaper group. This group is not on my side. He has just published an interview with Glagolev, a member of the Russian Politburo. I am referring now to the article by John D’Oliveira about a month ago. It appeared in certain newspapers in South Africa as well. The report says the following, among other things—

These facts cannot be denied.

You are making the ground fertile for them.

That hon. member is approaching with his back turned to me again. I should prefer not to respond to him, because I am talking now to the more sensible people on the other side.

It must be clear to every right-thinking South African that a total strategy is being applied against us. There is only one way in which that total strategy can be opposed, and that is by working for the greatest possible joint effort to develop a counter-strategy. As Minister of Defence I have been pleading for these things for the past 13 years. I am not going to read it all in this House today. However, I have repeatedly urged, inside and outside this House, that we should wake up to these problems. Now it remains a fact that one can only take certain practical steps. I want to deal briefly with a few of these.

In the first place, one needs efficient machinery of State. Now I am not saying that our machinery of State has not been efficient in the past. In fact, I think South Africa has a very good Public Service. I think it has been the pride of this country for years. However, we should examine the machinery from time to time to ascertain whether it cannot be streamlined and better equipped to meet the demands of the times. That is the motivation behind our attempt to build up a well-organized and well-staffed Public Service, a Public Service which will be able to help an effective Government in its struggle. In fact, the Public Service plays a crucial role in every total national strategy. For that reason, the rationalization of government services is not necessarily a new concept. We have had a rationalization of government services in the past. Allow me to refer to just one example. Years ago we had an S.A. Defence Force as well as a Secretariat. I am told that during the Second World War, Sir Pierre van Ryneveld had the door between himself and the Secretary for Defence nailed shut because he thought the Secretariat was superfluous. We had the matter investigated and we succeeded in rationalizing it and abolishing the Secretariat. Today we are much more efficient than ever before. There is also the example of rationalization between the old Housing Office and the establishment of the Department of Community Development.

Therefore, rationalization is not a reflection on the Public Service. It is an essential step in establishing machinery with which to promote efficiency. We also called in the private sector. We asked three of the best leaders in the private sector to serve on the Public Service Commission. They did valuable work there. So we were not afraid of co-operating with the private sector in that way.

We began with the rationalization of the Cabinet system by means of the creation of a Cabinet Secretariat. We created five permanent committees instead of 20 Cabinet Committees in order to bring about greater and more efficient co-ordination. We introduced a target budgeting system. Furthermore, the rationalization of the central Public Service will mean that government functions will be reorganized into smaller Government departments. In addition, the staff system of the Public Service will be systematically reorganized.

At a given stage, when the rationalization has been completed, all legislation will be examined with a view to repealing and amending obsolete legislation and consolidating and simplifying all remaining measures. This is an essential step in the struggle against the onslaught which is being made on us. Project teams have made considerable progress already, and I am able to say that this rationalization will be carried out in four stages. The first stage comes into operation on 1 March 1980. A White Paper in this connection will be made available to this House at a later stage. The second phase will come into operation on 1 April 1980; it will be followed by the third phase, i.e. the systematic reallocation of functions among Government departments; and the fourth phase depends on the remainder of the Government departments which cannot be dealt with during the Parliamentary session because of budgetary problems. In other words, this step is an important one in order to establish efficient and effective Government control and Government organization.

One of the consequences, which has naturally received attention as well, is the Department of National Security. Sir, I personally find it a great pity that this department has recently been slandered in such a reckless and irresponsible way. Allow me to say that I am not here today to defend any Government department by describing it as faultless. Every Government department is staffed by human beings, and errors of judgment are committed all the time.

However, as far as the Department of National Security is concerned, I want to discuss a few matters which I believe this House is entitled to be informed about. Mr. McGiven really started the slandering of this department. Mr. McGiven was a relatively junior official in the department and served there for a few years only. As a student he served as a source of all kinds of stories which he fed to the department. In 1976 he became a junior evaluator—this is a fairly low rank—and apparently he became so frustrated that he resigned.

What the department did not know was that he did have access to the registration offices of the department, in spite of the fact that he had such a low rank. He seems to have got hold of loose documents which were available in the registration offices. On 28 September 1979 he resigned, obviously as a result of frustrations and personal problems, which I do not wish to discuss here, because I do not want to injure him unnecessarily. I shall do so if I am driven to it, however. He never lodged any complaints with his immediate superior in the department, with his departmental head, with the Deputy Minister of National Security, or with me after I became Minister of the Department of National Security. In other words, if he was dissatisfied or if he felt that there were irregularities, he did not take the obvious course of bringing these to the attention of the authorities.

He wanted an appointment overseas, but the department refused because the department hesitated, in view of his special circumstances, to give him an appointment there. Then he left.

Now he is making the charge, and certain media have elaborated on this, that this department was established as a party-political instrument. However, this is devoid of all truth, as appears from the debates which took place in this House when the department was created, first in the form of the old bureau and later as the Department of National Security. On 16 May 1969, the official Opposition, through the mouth of Mr. L. P. Murray, expressed its support in this House for its introduction. Then Mr. Potgieter, Justice of Appeal, was appointed to investigate the intelligence services of the country and to try to establish a proper basis for their co-operation. My predecessor appointed a committee of this House—not officially, that is true, but informally—a committee on which the then Leader of the Opposition also served, and, if I am not mistaken, the hon. member for Durban Point as well, and together we worked through Mr. Justice Potgieter’s report over a period of several days. Then a Bill was drafted which was supported by us all. The Bill came before Parliament and was supported by Sir De Villiers Graaff in a very short speech. The hon. member for Houghton also supported it in a very short speech.

[Inaudible.]

The first point I want to make, therefore, is that the charge or allegation that this department was established as a party-political instrument is devoid of all truth. The events bear witness to that.

That is what it became.

No.

Why do you not wait like all good people do?

I wish to continue. I want to give the assurance, the well-considered assurance—and I am giving it specifically to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—that no meetings of legitimate political parties are bugged by the Department of National Security. That is a fact. I have instructed that this practice be continued. However, information was obtained last year which indicated that a foreign body, which I do not wish to identify here, installed a bugging device in a building in which the NP was holding a caucus meeting. [Interjections.]

It must have been Helen!

When this came to my attention, and I knew that Ministers had to address that meeting, I requested the Department of National Security to investigate the matter. Because the bugging of the NP’s caucus proceedings—and by the same token, of the caucus proceedings of any other legitimate party—by a foreign body is in my opinion a subversive act against the national security of this country—I hope the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is following this, because I include his caucus in this—I made this request to the Department of National Security. Their technical department produced this hidden microphone which I have here in my hand. [Interjections.]

Order!

I do not want to say any more about this. I could say a great deal, but I do not want to say any more, except that we know who they are. These people are going to get their fingers burnt. If they want to play with crackers in South Africa, they are going to get their fingers burnt. I am warning them. If the hon. member asks me, therefore, whether the Department of National Security would bug any party caucus, my reply is that no caucus or meeting of a legitimate political party in this House or outside is bugged. However, in the case of one of those caucuses, in the case of ours, there was an attempt to bug it. And it was not undertaken by the Department of National Security.

When you use the word “foreign”, do you mean by that that it is a foreign …

I shall not take it any further than the words I have used. What I am prepared to do, on the basis of the proper accord which has come into being between the Leader of the Opposition and myself, is to tell him in confidence what additional information I have about it.

I want to go further and to make an offer. A new departmental head has been appointed in the Department of National Security and I have had long discussions with him. He is to take over that position shortly. We have agreed that he must be prepared, together with colleagues of his from other intelligence services, to submit a security survey to the leaders of the three parliamentary parties once or twice a year, provided that they will treat it as confidential. That is the second offer I am making.

I wish to make a further communication to this House, and I hope the House will be patient with me. I have been speaking for some time. In talking about the comprehensiveness of the onslaught, I also want to announce here today that a certain so-called movement in South Africa, a right-wing group, very recently sought the support of the Soviet Union and of Communist China in order to overthrow this Government I have documentary proof of this. I have it in my hand. I shall not mention the name of that movement, but we have documentary proof.

You say it is a right-wing group?

Yes, a right-wing group.

Now you are overjoyed! [Interjections.]

You know, Sir, I do find it strange to see how that old law in terms of which the two ends of a circle meet applies in this case as well. I also find it interesting to see how the most leftist radical circles in South Africa are forging links with the most right-wing radical circles in the country. [Interjections.]

Shortly after I assumed the office of Prime Minister and of Minister of National Security, I appointed an interdepartmental committee under the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister, which was to bring about further coordination in our intelligence set-up.

On the basis of the Security Intelligence and State Security Council Act, I gave certain instructions and laid down or confirmed certain guidelines. I shall deal with those at the end of my speech. One of the consequences is that a proclamation is being signed by the State President today in terms of which, among other things, the name of this department will be changed to the National Intelligence Service, which is actually the proper designation. Intelligence, i.e. the material with which the department has to work, may be recorded on paper, film, records or magnetic tapes. Usually there are written, typed or printed words on paper which are received in the form of reports from officials or in the form of cuttings from newspapers and publications. The mere existence of a file which is linked to a particular subject by way of indexing by no means implies, therefore, that the subject is important from a security point of view or, in the case of a person, that his or her integrity or loyalty are being questioned. In other words, one of the tasks of the department is to collect public information about every person who is an expert and who makes statements about any subject, about policy-makers, opinion-formers, collaborators, people who write to the department, persons mentioned in intelligence documents, persons who are in contact with suspect persons or organizations which are dangerous to the State, persons whose names appear on the target list of terrorist organizations, persons whose names are being used as a cover by enemies of the country, with or without their knowledge, persons who, as a result of the position they occupy, the degree of influence they may have, the access they have, or the knowledge they possess, are wittingly or unwittingly being exploited and manipulated by foreign intelligence services and other hostile elements.

Who does that exclude?

The hon. member must not be afraid. [Interjections.] Therefore, with regard to the allegation made by McGiven concerning files, we must have a clear conception of what is meant by a “file”. In all likelihood, there is more than one file about statements made and actions taken by me. I am told that all over the Western World, the intelligence services derive 90% of their information from public information, simply through their expertise in correlating things from public information. This requires experts, and we have such experts in the department, and they must not be slandered by every Tom, Dick and Harry who knows nothing about these matters. They are people who work under stress and people who endanger their lives for South Africa. It is not right that every Tom, Dick and Harry should write just what he pleases and self-righteously drag these people through the mud. I object to that. These people cannot defend themselves. They cannot get up in public and tell people that they are lying. They must do their work under frustrating circumstances day after day, sometimes under the most dangerous circumstances, in the interests of this country. I think they deserve our thanks, not our denigration.

The balance of the information, i.e. 10%, must naturally be obtained in a covert fashion. It would certainly not be in the interests of the security of the State for me to enumerate all the covert methods and channels which are used in accordance with tried and tested Western practices. I am not going to do that here.

One of these, however, is the statutory provision which is made in section 118A of Act 101 of 1972, which provides that the Department of National Security is one of the bodies which may intercept mail or communication by telephone in the prescribed manner where such interception is deemed necessary in the interests of the maintenance of the security of the country. The accusation of their being “snoopers” which is being made here, is utter nonsense. These people have too much work to go about like a lot of fishwives and pick up garbage.

There is a saying which goes “If you want to sup with the devil, you need a long spoon.” I want to apply this saying: “If you want to communicate with the devil, use his postal facilities or allow him to use your postal facilities or your letterheads.” I give hon. members the assurance that no hon. member in this House is at present receiving unfavourable attention from the Department.

[Inaudible.]

I give hon. members that assurance. I made personally certain of this. However, that does not indemnify any hon. member in this House from getting into trouble if he consorts with the devil.

Like Winston Churchill …

I am coming to that. Since the hon. member has something to say about this now, I want to tell her that I cannot give this assurance in respect of the correspondents of that hon. member.

Appoint a Select Committee.

I am saying that I give this assurance in respect of every hon. member in this House, but I do not give it in respect of certain correspondents of the hon. member for Houghton.

That is absolute nonsense. [Interjections.] Anybody can write to you.

In addition I want to say that the Churchill letter was not intercepted …

There was more than one.

I shall reply to the hon. member. She need not become nervous.

There was more than one.

The Churchill letter was not intercepted on instructions from me, or the department or any responsible officer in terms of section 118A.

Was any one irresponsible then?

No, but there are other sources from which such letters may emanate.

What do you mean?

There are other sources from which such letters may emanate.

That is interesting. Let us hear about them.

Since the hon. member is so curious, I want to tell him that, inter alia, there are other establishments and McGivens. McGiven did not lodge his complaints with the persons or bodies with whom he should have lodged them. Who paid him to do what he did, i.e. to steal documents that had not been evaluated and to flee the country with them? What other things did he do before committing this act? [Interjections.] Why did he contact the hon. member for Houghton so soon?

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member must not push me too far; or I shall tell her who writes on her letterheads and who writes her name on the back of the envelope and signs his own name to the letter. [Interjections.] No, the hon. member is a vicious little cat when she is wronged, but I say to her: “Choose your friends better.”

Do you not remember saying that you were going to appoint a Select Committee of this House? I dare you!

Things were written about secret meetings on her letterheads and her name was put to wrong use on the back of that envelope by a person who, according to our information, is a member of a foreign intelligence service.

Why do you not produce these documents to a Select Committee? [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr. Justice Potgieter described the functions of the intelligence service of the Republic with regard to the onslaught on the Republic of South Africa as follows: To determine the threat or potential threat to state security and in this connection to identify the enemy or potential enemy. That was the first task. Secondly, to determine the vulnerability and capacities of the identified enemy or potential enemy: and thirdly, to enable the bodies that have to decide how the threat or potential threat is to be prevented or counteracted to pursue a policy of prevention or counteraction.

I want to conclude as far as this matter is concerned.

What about answering my questions? [Interjections.]

Surely I said that the hon. member was not under scrutiny. Did she not hear it? Why is the hon. member for Musgrave now leaping into the breach for her?

I challenge you to appoint a Select Committee.

Order!

I shall deal with that in a moment. I am not going to allow the hon. member for Houghton to do with the Intelligence Service of South Africa what her kindred spirits did to the American Information Service.

I challenge you to produce proof of what you have said.

Order!

I am telling her now, Sir, no Select Committee will be established.

You are frightened.

Order!

You are running away.

I am warning everyone, and if it includes her, I am warning her as well, that if they continue to associate with people who wish to jeopardize the laws of the country, they are then going to make trouble for themselves. [Interjections.]

Order! This matter can be discussed further in the debate. [Interjections.]

Now, Sir … [Interjections.]

You should be ashamed of yourself. [Interjections.]

Order! I am not going to allow any further interjections on this matter. Hon. members may discuss this matter further during the course of the debate.

I want to give the hon. the Leader of the Opposition the assurance that as a result of this investigation into greater co-ordination we established a committee of senior officials from the three Intelligence Services under the Chairmanship of the Chief of National Security, now the National Intelligence Service. This person is responsible for the evaluation of all intelligence, whether it falls into the 90% or into the 10% category. Only when they have evaluated it is that evaluated intelligence submitted to the State Security Council. Unevaluated intelligence which has nothing to do with State Security is destroyed. Those are the instructions. Secondly, the final interpretation of intelligence on a national level is undertaken by the representatives of the South African Defence Force, the Police, Foreign Affairs, National Security and any other department which may be involved. Thirdly, unnecessary duplication must be eliminated by way of co-ordination and co-operation. Interception of mail and communications in terms of the law must be requested judicially and only by the departmental head or his principal deputy. This is an instruction. Raw, unevaluated information which is deemed, after examination, to be of no future value, must be destroyed. With that I think we have complied with the most important requirements laid down by the Potgieter Report.

I shall leave the matter at that, except to say that as a result of agitation in America we all know what happened to the CIA. I do not want to quote it here, but would suggest to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that he reads the book The Crisis in the United States Intelligence which appeared last year in December. It was published by Conflict Studies. In it he will see that if a State subjects its intelligence services to the kind of thing to which they have been subjected here in South Africa recently, it leads to the weakening of that service. The American President himself has to admit now that he has to take other steps to put his intelligence service in order. I am not going to allow the intelligence service of South Africa to be weakened. I am taking that responsibility upon myself, and I shall defend my standpoint before the entire country. I am not going to allow it to be castigated in public by unscrupulous scoundrels who flee the country with the aid of others and then spread slanderous stories in foreign countries.

May I ask you a question?

No. [Interjections.] I wish to conclude …

You are a coward.

Order! The hon. member must rise and withdraw her words.

Sir, I am not going to do it.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the words or leave the Chamber.

I will not.

Then the hon. member must please withdraw from the House for the remainder of the day’s sitting.

(The hon. member thereupon withdrew.)

Sir, I want to conclude and once again I ask this House to be patient.

Are you going to deal with the question of joint decision-making versus consultation?

Yes, I am going to deal with it, but I had to deal with this matter the way I did in order to give hon. members all the information.

You did not deal with the last bit of it.

You just gave us a lot of tripe, that is all.

Order!

I want to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Durban Point today how far I am prepared to go. I think it is time we understood one another very clearly on these points. I submitted a 12-point plan to each of my congresses. I stand or fall by that 12-point plan. On the basis of that 12-point plan I think we can do justice to every population group in this country. The right to self-determination is the principle which must be accepted by the Republic of South Africa in practice. That means that I do not accept compulsory integration.

As far as the Coloureds and the Indians are concerned, we submitted proposals to the Schlebusch Commission and when I originally discussed the matter during the discussion of the private motion of the hon. member for Mooi River a few years ago, I said that it was a process and that it could not be introduced all at once. I went on to say that I attach great value to the proposed President’s Council. I believe that, within that President’s Council, we have the possibility of bringing together the Economic Advisory Council, the Scientific Advisory Council and other bodies which we have today for furnishing the State with co-ordinated advice, on constitutional matters as well. I do not want to go into that report of the Schlebusch Commission any further. We are meeting on it around a conference table, in order to deliberate on it.

I believe, however, that the President’s Council places an important instrument in our hand, as a first step for the achievement of a solution for Whites, Coloureds and Indians in this country. But I also believe that on a lower level the Coloureds should have their own authority, enabling them to deal with their own direct affairs. I think this is absolutely in their own interests. That is why I hope that, through calm deliberation on the Schlebusch Commission, steps will be evolved or machinery will be established which could lead to meaningful consultation and deliberation with one another in future. But if we are going to score points off one another on that commission, it will come to nothing.

Furthermore, I believe in the division of power as far as possible. This is my first reply to the hon. member for Durban Point. I am referring to the “division” of power, not the “sharing” of power. I believe in the decentralization of power insofar as it does not thwart effective decision-making by the State. Instruments for consultation must be created as far as possible, and we are engaged in doing so, for example on the Housing Commission, the Group Areas Board, road transportation boards and elsewhere. Consequently we are creating machinery for consultation and for joint deliberation on matters of common interest.

But what about joint decision-making.

On those lower levels it is applicable. When the Housing Commission makes a decision, it is a joint decision.

And on a high level?

But I am not prepared, on the highest level, to violate the principle of the right to self-determination.

Continued White baasskap! [Interjections.]

The hon. member for Bryanston needs a White master. [Interjections.] The National Party Government—and I want to make this very clear—does not think in terms of a unitary State with a system of “one man, one vote”. We reject this for the Republic of South Africa. It does not sufficiently guarantee the rights of minority groups, and will lead to confrontation and a power struggle which will result in a Black dictatorship. Moreover, it is also a threat to the right to self-determination. Secondly, the National Party Government is not in favour either of models which are based on the idea of consociation. Experts who know what they are talking about tell one candidly that the idea of consociation cannot succeed in a multiple, plural community because strife and conflict are inherent in it.

In the third place we are not in favour of a federation either, in whatever form.

Not even between the Coloureds and Indians?

Oh please, surely I have now dealt with the Indians and the Coloureds separately, and have told the hon. member what our standpoint is. In my opinion it will lead primarily to an impairment of effective decision-making. I am talking about a federation now. It will also lead to the loss of the principle of the right to self-determination.

Now threats are emanating from various quarters: “If you do not get a move on, if you do not comply with these demands, there is going to be violence.” I want to ask who and what brought violence to Rhodesia. Who and what brought violence to Angola? Who and what brought violence to Mozambique? Should we not join together in saying to those people who speak of violence: “You are playing with fire, because violence can come from two sides”? What do we stand for? I refer to the 12-point plan and this afternoon I am referring more specifically, in this connection, to that section dealing with the idea of a constellation. I repeat that the constellation idea is a process. It cannot happen all at once. One must begin to stimulate such a disposition in those States surrounding us that we can deliberate with one another on matters of common interest in the sphere of agriculture, for example on the controlling of stock diseases, the improvement of the livestock, etc. Secondly, there has to be deliberation on economic co-operation, particularly on a regional basis. Thirdly, the principle of the voluntary participation of independent States must be preserved. Fourthly, the surrender of sovereignty of participating States is not included in the idea of a constellation of States.

However, we cannot merely ensure cooperation between States only. We must also involve the private section in this matter, and this we have tried to do with great success. The participation of the private sector will ensure that professional codes are laid down for Southern Africa and will have to be made applicable. Businessmen will have to agree among themselves not to apply unethical principles in the management of their affairs. On its part, however, the private sector will ask for guarantees that nationalization will not take place when it employs its capital for development. We have already conveyed that message to the authorities concerned. We told them: “You have unemployment. You have a backlog in respect of development. It is absolutely essential that you obtain the co-operation of the private sector, but you will only do so provided you give an absolute assurance on the question of nationalization.”

The idea was expressed, inter alia, by the hon. member for Durban Point in passing, of a federal/confederal system. I now want to tell him that we envisage that this process will result in a council of States. We envisage that it is going to result in the creation of a secretariate or secretariates. What we also envisage, however, and what we stand by, is that if it must be a form of confederation it must be a confederation of independent States which will co-operate with one another, and not a super body which exercises collective control over them. That is what we understand confederation to mean.

Now you are getting closer.

Very well then. That hon. member says I am getting closer. Well, if I am getting closer, surely he should support me and not laugh at me.

You know how long it has taken us to get you this far.

No, I do not know how long it has taken the hon. member. The hon. member has only been in this House for a few years. I do not think that he has ever dragged me, although he has frequently held me back.

As far as the semi-independent State are concerned, i.e. the self-governing States which are not yet independent, we are of the opinion that they can be represented by the mother State and that they can be present as associated members at those discussions as observers and advisers. [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to continue. The hon. member will now ask me what is going to become of the urban Black man who lives outside the national States. The National Party Government announced in the days of my predecessor already that we shall, to begin with, grant them a higher status than municipal status, but not overnight, because it has to grow if they co-operate. That higher degree of local government, which is higher than municipal government, can receive a say in some co-ordinated form or other in this council of States where the constellation of States deliberate with one another on matters of common interest. [Interjections.]

What about citizenship?

I expected that. I am coming to that.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether the urban Black people may have a say independently of the homelands?

I believe—I said this here last year already—that most Black people in our urban areas have homeland ties, and consequently I believe that they would prefer to participate in such a constellation through their national States. However, if there are still those, who for some practical reason or other, cannot be accommodated in this way, it is within the framework of our view that one can allow them to participate in such a constellation of States, in the discussions within the framework of such a council of States.

We have taken the question of citizenship into account. In the past we have stated that we are not only liberating countries, but nations as well. However, we admit, because we are reasonable people, that there are certain facets which prevent people from accepting other citizenship because they have certain benefits in terms of the South African citizenship they enjoy, including travel facilities. We have appointed a committee—and the hon. the Minister of the Interior is hard at work on this matter—to see whether we cannot find a solution and to have those facilities created within the framework of the idea of the council of States, so that people do not feel that they are being wronged when they exercise their citizenship together with the rest of their nation. We are working on this, but the solution will not be there overnight. I have said that it is a process and it has to be hammered out by experts. If the hon. the Leader of the Opposition wishes to make a contribution, he is very welcome. It will be considered on merit.

Mr. Speaker, may I put another question to the hon. the Minister?

Just a moment. First let me finish dealing with this point. The problems in connection with travel documents and other aspects which arise with the laying aside of citizenship, could possibly be solved with such a form of confederation. As I have said, the matter is at present being investigated by us, and we shall not hesitate to go to our party and submit these things candidly to our congresses when we have to obtain a decisive answer for ourselves on the matter. Today, however, there is as yet no party which has a decisive answer on this matter, and for that reason my plea is the same as that to the Black leaders: Let us begin building on the things on which we have clarity; let us build on your unemployment; let us build on your development backlog; let us build on your constitutional instruments; let us build on better relations; let us build on your economies; and let us build on your health services. Let us make entities of you that will not result in a distorted economy in South Africa. Surely these things are obvious. Surely we have an enormous amount of work with which we can occupy ourselves without talking solely of violence because certain things have not yet been achieved.

That is why I wish to make a plea for national unity today. I wish to make a plea for the rearrangement of our priorities. There is something which I wish to say specifically to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Our most important priority is the struggle against Marxism, the struggle for the safety of South Africa. That is priority number one. Not only must we convince White South Africa of this; we must also convince Brown and Black South Africa of this. However, we shall not convince them by lying down and saying: “Trample me underfoot if you wish.” We shall convince them by saying: “Have you ever considered what will become of you if there is a Marxist take-over? What will happen to you then is what happened to Angola, where no infrastructure exists any more in the small towns, where no health services exist any more and where no education of proper magnitude exists any more. What will happen to you then is what happened in Moçambique, where people who were still exporting food a few years ago now have no food to eat. What will happen to you is what is happening to Rhodesia as a result of Marxist intervention.” We must orientate our people to understand that while we can have our mutual differences, distinctions between White and Black, Marxism is no solution. That is priority number one. From the citizenry must come a greater spiritual and physical preparedness. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition can help me in this connection. He can clamp down on certain people who hide behind his party. In this country a spirit should develop in which we ask ourselves “What can I do for my country?” and not “What can my country do for me?”

Kennedy said that.

Whether Kennedy said it or whether Boraine said it, what difference does it make?

It is perfectly true.

It is true nevertheless.

Another priority is national service. We must get our attitude to national service straight. We must also get our attitude to something else straight. What annoys me intensely is the way in which our people—Whites, Coloureds and Blacks—pollute this country. It is a disgrace. Recently we celebrated the 60th anniversary of our Air Force. We are proud of it. We must look after it. But what do we do? We discard plastic bags and wrapping papers all over the place and then the Air Force has to clean up after us. It is a disgrace to see what our beaches look like. Let us support one another and create a new spirit of dedication in this country. Let us stop denigrating one another. Let us rather say: It is South Africa’s interests which must come first.

That is the first good point you have made.

Sir, as far as freedom is concerned, how do we use our freedom in South Africa? The right to express fair criticism and even protest is part of that freedom. I admit that. But must criticism and protest inevitably imply the awful consequences of negativism, the lengths, as we have seen, to which people in this country take it by stirring up extra-parliamentary actions and trying to by-pass Parliament? After all, we cannot do without this Parliament. This is not a racial Parliament. Parliament is granting freedom to other nations, and one cannot grant it to them in any other way—apart from revolution—than by means of this Parliament. Now from time to time the threat of confrontation and revolution is heard from non-Governmental circles, particularly from left-wing and right-wing radicals. I am afraid that this spirit is being encouraged in a cunning way by certain newspapers, by interference by communist agents, but also by uncalled for interference in our internal matters from certain Western circles. There are certain people who do not see their task as being limited to the promotion of sound relations with South Africa, but who want to tell us what South Africa should look like. The South African Government, the South African State cannot and will not allow itself to be held to ransom. We shall change those things which must be changed in this country and we shall do so because it is right, because it is Christian, because it is fair. The people who take the law into their own hands or further terrorism, are going to get hurt. They are being warned in advance. Also those who operate across the South African borders are being warned in advance.

If all our efforts to ensure peace should fail, if all our efforts to make progress through consultation fail, if all our goodwill and methods of upliftment are set at naught, and people try to dictate to us by means of violence, something will happen to the West on this subcontinent which they cannot imagine at the moment. I am saying this with all the responsibility I have at my disposal. If people drive us until we have our backs to the wall, we shall strike and the consequences even the West cannot imagine today. We have not been sleeping. We have been preparing ourselves. For the sake of peace and stability we have been preparing ourselves. On that basis a better South Africa can be established here.

I therefore move as a further amendment—

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Prime Minister’s speeches are always interesting and this one was no exception. His speeches tend to have a strongly emotional content at times and certainly towards the end of his speech this afternoon it contained that emotional content. I think, in all fairness to the hon. the Prime Minister, we should say that we believe that the public of South Africa will be bitterly disappointed in the speech he made this afternoon. [Interjections.] He failed to rise up to the expectations the people of South Africa, Black, White and Brown, have that the Government has changed into forward gear and is now moving forward towards a new South Africa. He failed in that respect. He failed to meet the three cogent charges put to him by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

He failed to give a satisfactory, intelligible answer to the complaints which have been made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, other party leaders and the hon. member for Houghton in respect of the activities of the Department of National Security. I think it is a tragedy that the hon. member for Houghton felt compelled, as a result of the hon. the Prime Minister’s action, to leave the House this afternoon.

The simple fact is that the hon. the Prime Minister has not yet explained that in terms of the Act certain formal procedures have to be followed when the mail of any individual is intercepted. He has gone some way towards explaining the matter by saying that, because there was some doubt about her correspondents, incoming mail may have been intercepted. That does not, however, explain the interception of the hon. member for Houghton’s outgoing mail. That can only be done in terms of the specific procedures laid down, and that is when her outgoing mail involves a security risk. That is the requirement in terms of the law and the hon. the Prime Minister, I believe, owes it to the hon. member to say whether, in fact, at the time that her outgoing mail was intercepted those procedures were followed and she was considered by those people to be a security risk. Failing that, the law has been broken, the procedures have not been followed. We must now ask, as we did of the previous Prime Minister, whether he accepts responsibility for the actions of the members of his department. Does he accept responsibility for the actions of Dons? That is the first question and it is unresolved. The hon. member for Houghton sent me a note because she understood the hon. the Prime Minister to say that she was acting in cahoots with a foreign intelligence agency. The note was sent in and I think it should be clarified whether the hon. the Prime Minister said that she was acting in cahoots with a foreign intelligence agency. She understood that to have been said and if that is not so, I believe it should be formally noted for the record. I ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether in respect of the hon. member’s outgoing mail the correct procedures were applied. Were the correct legal procedures applied, and if not, who is going to accept responsibility for this deviation from the requirements of the statute?

There is another aspect which has been raised quite afresh by the hon. the Prime Minister. He said that there is a large number of files on all kinds of people, opinion-formers, politicians and other people who could in no way be considered to be subversive. He said that 90% of this information was gained in the ordinary way, but as I understood him he said that 10% of this information was actually gained in a covert way. He is saying that ordinary citizens can anticipate that 10% of the information on the files on them was gained by bugging, telephone tapping or the interception of mail. All I want to know is whether in respect of the files on people who are not considered to be subversive, it is true that the hon. the Prime Minister is saying that 90% of the information is gained covertly, but that it could be that 10% of that information is gained in some underhand manner. If it is the case that in respect of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with subversion but on whom files are being compiled, telephone tapping takes place, letters are being intercepted, there is spying, infiltration or the tapping of conversations, we say that this procedure is unacceptable in any country claiming to be democratic or having a parliamentary system of government. Apart from that, I believe that the hon. the Prime Minister should consider whether he will not respond, perhaps quietly later in this debate, to the request of the hon. member for Houghton. She feels—and understandably so—deeply aggrieved. She feels that a slur has been cast on her as an hon. member. Information has been made public and she is quite prepared to submit evidence to a Select Committee of the House appointed to examine this particular detailed charge which has been made.

I want to leave that and return to the main thrust of the hon. Leader of the Opposition’s attack on the Government and, in a sense, to the response to it by the Government. Much of this debate has been devoted to an attempt by the Government to show that the public were wrong in having great expectations when it comes to the present Prime Minister and his Government. The public have great expectations. These were brought about by certain statements by the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development. They were also brought about by the way the hon. the Prime Minister’s tackled the “verkramptes” at his own party congresses. There is no doubt about it that the members of the public of South Africa are within their rights to expect of this Government a great forward surge in the “verligte” direction. Instead of that we have had back-pedalling, retreating and explaining why the public should not expect too much. It has been disappointing in the extreme.

Much of this anticipation of course arises from the hon. the Prime Minister’s concept of a national strategy. We in these benches have no fault to find with the concept. We believe that there should be a national strategy, embracing all sections of the population, not only for developing South Africa but also for defending South Africa in the difficult days that lie ahead. However, we do have serious doubts about aspects of the national strategy as it has been propounded by the hon. the Prime Minister. When one reads the 12-point plan for the national strategy, one realizes that the hon. the Prime Minister and his party sit on the horns of an ideological and philosophical dilemma, because in a strange way the Government by its actions is actually starting to destroy the whole philosophy of apartheid, while at the same time putting nothing new in its place.

There is only one field in this new strategy in which there is a wholeness, in which the Government has committed itself to replace apartheid or separate development with a new philosophy, and that is in the field of our economy. If recommendations of the Wiehahn and Riekert Commissions are accepted as the basis around which it is going to build that strategy, then there is a oneness about it, there is a coherence about it, there is, in fact, a new philosophy which can take the place of the old philosophy of Dr. Verwoerd. It accepts the oneness of our economy, a uniform pattern of labour, our economy opened up to people of all races, but it still does, as the hon. members for Parktown and Pinelands indicated, have to take a number of practical steps to get rid of apartheid. The philosophy, however, is there: one economy, one labour force, one free economy, one economic system for all the peoples of South Africa. That is the philosophy. It is entirely different from that of Dr. Verwoerd. It is turning its back on Dr. Verwoerd, because hon. members will recall that Dr. Verwoerd said that if one accepts economic integration one has to accept political and social integration, and in the end the loss of White identity. We know that is not so. But there are certain important social and political consequences of having one economy. We have to face up to those. Just as the Government, in a philosophical sense, has accepted the oneness of our economy, and getting rid of apartheid and discrimination in our economy, so we believe it should face up, in a philosophical sense, to the alternative to apartheid in both the social and political fields. So it is no use for the hon. the Prime Minister to talk about vertical differentiation, about the division of power or about consultation, because sooner or later the component parts of our South African people are going to have to be brought together in a new strategy for sharing political power. If hon. members opposite do not like the phrase, ‘sharing power”, let them call it joint responsibility, or shared decision-making. But one thing is certain, one cannot have a national strategy unless the various elements involved in that national strategy are brought together in taking joint decisions on a common future. As our economy becomes more unified, as the pressures upon South Africa become greater, so in fact this commonality, this joint decision-making, this sharing of power, is going to become more and more important. So, if the hon. the Prime Minister wants to give an inspired lead in the direction of a new strategy, let him forget the mumbo-jumbo of the past and face up to the fact that our problem is not how to separate, how to divide. Our problem in South Africa is how to bring the people together in a new joint decision-making process.

Secondly, in the social field the Government is making changes. Yes, it is. I believe, however, that the Government must not be afraid of its shadow. It must not be afraid of the past. It must actually say to the people of South Africa: Yes, this Government, this country, is moving in the direction of an open society. By that I just mean compulsory apartheid must go. Hon. members opposite know that it is going in a large measure already.

We are not moving towards your open society.

Many of the measures which it was previously decided had to be on the Statute Book, in regard to closed facilities, are being removed. They are moving in the direction of an open society, but at the same time they are retaining laws which bind us to an apartheid society. This is a hopeless situation. It results in administrative confusion. It results in incidents too many to report. I do not have the time to quote them all, but there are two books full of incidents of the application of apartheid on the one hand, while giving exemptions on the other, This concept is making a mockery of the apartheid principles of the Government, but unfortunately the Government is not putting anything new in its place. If the Government wants to unite the people it must have a new philosophy to take over from the philosophy of apartheid, a new philosophy in the social field. I have no doubt that hon. members opposite realize that that means we must commit ourselves to move in a society which is free from apartheid, a society which is open. If one looks at the broad spectrum, one sees that all kinds of people have been affected by this dichotomy in the Government’s thinking and by this ambivalence of its behaviour, but none more so than the Coloured people of South Africa.

They have, for years, been the victims of a lack of direction on the part of the Government, its lack of perception and often its lack of sensitivity. The unedifying spectacle of the showdown between the Coloured leaders of the Executive Committee and the Prime Minister, which took place only two months ago, is perhaps an indication of the strained relationship which has grown up between the representatives of the Coloured people and the Government of South Africa. No doubt the Government can point to divisions amongst the Coloured people. Yes there are divisions, but there is also a remarkable degree of unity on how they see the future of South Africa. There are disagreements, but we should realize that even Sonny Leon, Lofty Adams and Les du Preez, who have now left the Labour Party, have all supported the Les du Preez Commission outlining their constitutional future. All the parties of the CRC, in an amazing display of unity in September last year, unanimously agreed on a new charter of rights, a new declaration, a new national strategy. I believe that the Government of South Africa should take note of that and say to those people: Yes, you and other South Africans are going to be brought into the decision-making process; you and other South Africans are going to live a life free from discrimination; you are going to be free to associate with whom you wish. This, however, requires something more. Taking the background and the history of Government and Coloured relations into account, it requires a symbolic act of reconciliation coming from the Government. So far I believe that the Government has missed the bus. I can think of no one symbolic act of reconciliation, such as the Prime Minister using this occasion today to stand up and say that this Government has come to its senses and that District Six is going to be available for Coloured people. That would be a symbolic act of reconciliation. It would be one of the most important positive steps this Government could take. Only recently the Mayor of Cape Town called on the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister rejected the plea once again. He said large parts of Salt River and Woodstock have already been made available to Coloureds. That is irrelevant, because Woodstock and Salt River have always been either Coloured or mixed. In any case, the Coloured people there do not want to see White people evicted from their homes. He said that over 75% of the properties expropriated were owned by Whites or Indians. Why is the Government so sensitive? In other places it has taken Coloured homes and has given them to Whites. Why is it so sensitive about doing this in reverse in District Six? The truth is that whoever owned those properties in District Six, 94% of the people living in that area were Coloured people, and the Prime Minister and the Government know this. The Prime Minister says that there was a terrible slum there in the 1960s and that that cannot be tolerated. Of course there was a slum, but hon. members know that there were plans to reconstruct District Six under the Slums Act. In any case, you can reconstruct an area without driving out the inhabitants merely because they happen to be Coloured. The Prime Minister said that they had spent millions upon millions of rand and that it was now too expensive to use that area for lower and middle income groups, but it is being used for White Police and Defence Force personnel, for hostels for aged people by the ACVV, for rehousing White tenants at sub-economic rentals in Fawley Terrace. It is to be used for a technikon, to provide parking for 2 800 cars and sportsfields. These arguments are all irrelevant. [Interjections.] The capital outlay is not the main area of cost. The Prime Minister must take into account the fuel consumed and the time wasted by the thousands of people who could be housed in District Six and work in Cape Town rather than being brought all the way from Mitchell’s Plain and beyond. We in these benches say to the Prime Minister at this stage that what is needed is an act of reconciliation. R30 million has already been spent on District Six, but this would be a small sum to write off in the present circumstances if once again one could restore some degree of harmony to the hearts of the Coloured people. We believe that the national strategy should not only be directed at all the people of South Africa, but that also needs this symbolic act of reconciliation. In a strange way the Government has shown signs of flexibility. Hon. members will recall that after all the protests at the resolutions the Cape congresses of the National Party, the Crossroads community has been reprieved. We were delighted to hear the announcement a week ago, after all the trauma in Grahamstown, that the Fingo village is to remain. If these changes could have taken place in Government thinking, we say to the Prime Minister, and to the hon. Ministers who will speak in this debate, that by declaring District Six an open area and allowing Coloured people to come back to a part of Cape Town where they really belong, this Government could usher in a new era of unity right here in the Mother City.

We say this because the hon. the Prime Minister has asked for national unity. He has pointed to the total onslaught. In these circumstances we ask: Is a declaration of District Six as an open area, as a home for the Coloured people, too much to ask from this Government when the future of South Africa is at stake?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Sea Point devoted much of his speech to the question of District Six. I do not want to go into that. I believe that the hon. Minister concerned will furnish him with a comprehensive reply in the course of this Parliamentary session. I want to tell him frankly that he has, as is his wont, once again tried to arouse emotions on an occasion when it was unnecessary to do so. After the major speech by the hon. the Prime Minister, in which the symbolism of a possible and an essential unity among all the people in Southern Africa was put forward so well and so clearly, I believe it is the least we can expect of all hon. members of the Opposition to try—as the hon. the Prime Minister indeed asked of them—to join in building a common South Africanism, if I may call it that, between the Whites and all the other population groups here in South Africa and between the Whites and the individuals of all the other population groups.

I believe that the hon. member for Sea Point, as well as a few other hon. members of the PFP, will find it difficult to find their way in politics in this new pattern of a common South Africa which demands the loyalty and dedication of all of us, this South Africa which we must all join in building up. They will have difficulty in finding their political path, because in past years they have lapsed so completely into emotions with which they have tried to discredit us and hold us responsible for everything that is wrong. I cannot, therefore, understand how they are ever going to come right.

The hon. member for Sea Point states that we must bring the people into the process of joint decision-making. He wants us to tell them how they will be freed from discrimination. He pleads a symbolic action on our part.

I note that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is leaving the House. I shall therefore address the hon. member for Sea Point. He must understand that what we need in South Africa is not one symbolic action. What we need in South Africa is a total plan of action, which the hon. the Prime Minister has also spoken about and which the NP itself also puts forward. We want to bind people together in every possible sphere of life in a common front against the communism on our borders. This means that we shall have to do so on the political front, on the constitutional front, on the economic front and in other spheres of life. In all these spheres we must unite our people so that they can stand together against this common onslaught.

There are three points I should like to discuss today. We are engaged in a no-confidence debate and the hon. Opposition has attacked the Government from every possible angle. Time and again they have raised matters they have hammered on in the past. However, there are three points about which I should like to exchange a few ideas with them. In the first place I want to say a few words about the eternal potential for conflict we have in South Africa. In the second place I want to dwell briefly on the concept of violence, to which the hon. the Prime Minister has also referred. In the third place, I also want to say a few words in regard to that plan which I believe we must market if we are to survive. I shall elaborate at a later stage on the marketing of this plan. It is the plan we want to market to all our population groups.

In talking about the eternal potential for conflict in South Africa, I maintain that the hon. member for Sea Point and other hon. members of the Opposition have created the impression in this debate and in many other debates and in their statements in the Press that we in South Africa can eliminate the problems in South Africa by way of a constitutional and political solution. I maintain that no single political solution, even if it be the most radical political solution of the most radical leader in South Africa, even if it be the solution put forward by the PFP and not the solution put forward by the NP, will be capable of eliminating the potential for conflict which is inherent in the population structure of South Africa.

Accordingly, we are all aware of the tremendous responsibility which rests on all of us, including those of us on the Government side, when we speak airily about political rights as if they represented the solution to everything. We must use a little more perspective. What is happening now? The entire world—our enemies, Black people in South Africa, people who are hostile to all of us sitting here today—is beginning more and more to put forward the idea that once the political kingdom has been attained, once we create a constitutional system, as a number of them propose in various ways, we shall solve all the problems. Let us be honest. The hon. member for Mooi River who thinks a great deal about this and will probably also discuss it, will agree with me. Whatever constitutional recipe and model we have in South Africa, we will always have a potential for revolution in South Africa—and I am speaking figuratively—a revolution of awakening aspirations among people, masses of underdeveloped people who are in a process of developing aspirations. We are dealing with a revolution of cultural conflict. No political party and no constitutional recipe will be able to remove the potential for revolution of cultural conflict in this complex South Africa, either now, in the following decade, or by the end of this century. This is something we could discuss at length. The sociologists talk about a revolution of increasing aspirations. No political recipe can undo that. We in South Africa are faced with a revolution of race emotion. It is a revolution which is raging throughout the world. I have seen it in America and I have seen it in West Germany. We shall have to struggle with these problems in the future, whatever constitutional recipe we may have. Accordingly, we must be responsible at all times and we must not put it to the world, and particularly to the non-White population groups here in South Africa, that politics affords the solution to all these problems. On the contrary, politics only represents one element of the total problem situation. We need only look at America, where they are also struggling with concepts such as freedom. I remember clearly the portrayal in Disneyland of Abraham Lincoln making the speech in which he said: “Freedom should be treated almost as the political religion of the nation.” When one considers carefully to what a vast extent that concept helped the Americans become a great nation, one sees that the same Americans are now struggling with that concept of freedom. In South Africa, too, we cannot make any concept absolute, as if it afforded the final solution. Everyone in South Africa who gives us recipes, recipes that vary from political models to recipes of violence, must be responsible and take into account the fact that they cannot achieve the total solution by way of politics. The Leader of the Opposition repeatedly referred to political rights and a few other members, inter alia, the hon. member for Parktown, said that whatever one does will be meaningless if one cannot support it with a joint political say. The NP has the recipe for joint political consultation and co-responsibility. As the Prime Minister rightly said, it is not an instantaneous solution which one could put forward tomorrow. It is an evolutionary recipe in which a great many people have a say. We speak to Black leaders. The hon. members of the Opposition speak to Black leaders. There are no two Black leaders in South Africa that agree entirely on the recipe we should adopt in the constitutional field. They, too, differ fiercely. There are Black leaders who say that the Black people in the urban areas will have no link whatsoever with the Black States in the future. On the other hand, there are Black people in the Black States who say that there will be such a link. There are Black leaders of the national States who say: Those are our people in those Black States. Therefore this is not an instantaneous recipe that we can dish up tomorrow. As time goes on we shall have to consider what recipe we can put forward in co-operation with all these leaders and groups to the benefit of everyone in South Africa.

There are people who are playing with the concept of violence. There is therefore something which I want to put to the hon. members of the Opposition. In these times that is one of the most dangerous things we can do. We see the statements by various Black leaders. Recently, in a private conversation with Chief Buthelezi, I said that when he and other leaders insisted on certain rights and privileges, our people did not like the fact that they hinted at the possibility of violence if they were unable to achieve what they wanted, because that only arouses emotions among our own people, and eventually our own people say: If it has to result in violence, then let it be so. I do not think it is responsible to want to go forward in that fashion. The members of the Opposition must also put certain questions to themselves. I do not believe even the hon. member for Pinelands wants to see a violent solution to problems on the road ahead in South Africa.

Of course not.

I accept his bona fides. It is therefore not right that he and other hon. members of that party should constantly be telling us that if this or that does not happen, they assume that there is a possibility of violence. The hon. member for Pinelands, that Opposition party, we, every Black leader and every Black people has the responsibility to educate our people. We live in a civilized country, in a civilized democratic country, and in a complex Southern Africa. In this context, violence is a solution we must never even mention. We must only educate people. Violence is out—now, tomorrow and for all time. By violence we can achieve nothing at all, whereas by hints of violence we can only create chaos. I therefore want to appeal to the Opposition. If they do not want violence, then they must not pass hints about it. They must not say it directly. That applies to each oone of us. We may not speak the same language as the prophets of violence in South Africa. I can think of no better recipe for the absolute and final failure of all our ideals for progress and development in Southern Africa than the recipe for violence, the potential for violence, the preaching of violence. I therefore ask that on the road ahead the hon. Opposition should most definitely co-operate with us and speak out very clearly against violence—and that is what I want to ask of the hon. member for Pinelands. They must not say that if this or that does not happen, there could be violence. They must say openly that violence may not be preached. They must say openly: Very well, that is wrong, let us rectify it. They must say so without adding the tailpiece of possible violence, because it is that tailpiece of possible violence which is troubling us to an increasing extent. If the hon. members of the Opposition had been sitting in the Government benches today, they would have seen that it is not so easy as it is to sit in those benches. Langenhoven was right when he said: “Beware of the sideroads, because there is a reason why the main road does not go that way.” We must bear in mind stability, development, progress and the interests of all people and communities in this country with its potential for conflict, and since we must do so, we must take into account the fact that these instant solutions are not the kind of solutions which can get us where we want to be. We must have the right attitude.

This brings me to another point. Let us consider the road ahead. What is necessary for sound attitudes? I say that we in South Africa must market a joint strategy—and that includes the Opposition—and market it to the Black people and other non-White peoples in this country as well. There are certain things—and the Opposition knows it—which the Whites in South Africa will not give up. They know it, too, because they, too, represent the voters. The Whites in South Africa will not give up the political say over themselves. The Whites in South Africa will not lapse into a guilt complex. The Whites in South Africa, including the voters whom hon. members opposite represent, will not permit their identity to be jeopardized at any stage, and the hon. members know it. If I ask the hon. member for Mooi River whether these people place a high premium upon their identity, he will say “yes”. If I ask the hon. member for Pinelands whether his people place a high premium upon their White identity, and he is honest, he will have to say that they do indeed place a high premium on it.

Nor will the Whites capitulate psychologically. I want to tell the hon. member for Pinelands that they can forget about that, because the Whites in South Africa will not capitulate psychologically, as some of the kindred spirits of hon. members opposite—I do not say they themselves—would like them to do.

Then there are a few things which the Whites do not want. They do not want to decide for Black people in South Africa. What is more, in our discussions with Black people we tell them so. We do not want to decide for them in the future. Nor do we want to decide about them. Similarly, however, we do not want them to decide about us. That is a very cardinal point of difference between the thinking on this side of the House and that of the Opposition. We do not want the Black people in South Africa to be inferior as people. We tell them that in so many words.

It is inherent in the policy of the NP that we wish to recognize the human dignity of every individual in this complex South Africa. We do not want Black people to be inferior. We do not want violence to be cherished as a solution. We do not want the Black States to be poor appendages of a wealthy White State. We do not want the Black residential areas to be poor appendages of wealthy White cities. We do not want the Black man to be a poor appendage of a wealthy White in his own mind, either. That we do not want. We certainly do not want to monopolize the wealth in South Africa. The NP is not interested in that. We do not want disorder and tension. Nor do we wish to creep. We want to join in building a common Southern Africa in which there will be opportunities for all according to merit and character, so that we may eliminate conflict and friction permanently.

We do not want the Soweto tail to wag the political dog in South Africa, as the Opposition seems to see it. We cannot deny that there is such a tail. We cannot deny the political importance of the Soweto tail. However, we cannot permit the political dog in South Africa to be flung around by that tail. It is a fundamental difference. I—in fact, all of us—sometimes form the impression that the Opposition revels in the fact that there is such a problem because that problem gives more practical form to their own political philosophy, viz. that we are a unitary community and that we must consistently give effect to that unity in the political, constitutional and all other spheres. I want to say to the Opposition in all earnest that we do not want the burning emotions in the neighbouring States around South Africa, the burning emotions which are raging at present in Rhodesia, to sear our whole future, then we in this House as Whites, and White political parties, must display responsibility. That responsibility places a tremendously high premium on our vision. It places a high premium on our loyalty to our country. It places a high premium on the self-respect which we as Whites must have on the road ahead.

I have had the privilege of sitting in this Parliament and listening to debates since 1963. We have experienced many dramatic changes in South African politics, but to me personally, no change in the political debate has been so dramatic as the change in the thinking in the ranks of the Opposition. I am pleased about that. There have been dramatic changes. One need only take note of how little they discuss the idea of a common society. One could go on and refer to point after point. We are grateful for those changes, because they indicate that ultimately even this Opposition perceives the realities of South Africa in such a way that it bodes well for all of us on the road ahead. I have already said to the Opposition that we do not believe in violence. We believe that violence generates violence, and we do not want to see violence generated in South Africa. We want to see goodwill generated. But let us not tell them that we have a perfect political recipe. The hon. the Prime Minister spelt out a plan here today. He said that this was a process. He did not say to the country and the world today that South Africa had a perfect recipe to solve the problems. He did not do that at all. Whereas he, and we who deal with the realities, are unable to say that, why then does the Opposition, in its attacks on us, tell the whole world that the Government are a group of oppressors politically, economically and in all other spheres. We cannot accept the blame. Some of the hon. Ministers have also said this. The hon. the Minister of Transport said it the other day. We cannot accept this blame for a historical backlog in development which the Black people on this continent suffer from. We have the responsibility to try to eliminate it, and the Black peoples and their leaders in this country cannot undo that reality by way of threats and insinuations of violence. Therefore, together with other hon. members on this side of the House, I appeal to the Opposition that we should move forwards in this no confidence debate. We have a fine future in this country. We have potential solutions in the constitutional and all other fields. Let us go forward with responsibility. Let us look after each other’s interests and our joint interests. If we do so, then I believe that Parliament as an institution will be able to make meaningful contributions to the future of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Innesdal has made a speech which, in my opinion, supports and underscores the whole argument of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He said everything in the country was fine, everything was in order, we need not be worried, the NP is filled with brotherly love for all the Black people, etc. But if all is indeed well, where does all the tension in the country come from? Who is talking about violence? Why all the talk about violence if the NP has created such favourable conditions that one can just about say there is no trouble in the country? If the hon. member carried on like that, one would imagine that there were no more difficulties or problems in the country to be solved, because everything was running smoothly now. That is the reaction of the NP. But there are other hon. members in the House who do not feel that that is the true state of affairs. There are enormous problems. The hon. member for Innesdal spoke about violence. Where does that story of violence come from? To say that hon. members this side of the House should not talk about violence does not mean that violence will simply disappear.

We are not talking about you.

The hon. member says he is not talking about me. As a member of the NRP I am speaking for my party. It will not serve any purpose for hon. members in this House to refrain from speaking about violence. Even if we stopped talking about violence, there would still be violence. There will still be a threat from outside against us Whites, Coloureds, Blacks and Indians in South Africa, because over the years that the NP has governed the country, certain historical events have taken place which have brought us to the point where there is a threat of violence against us. This requires leadership of such a nature from the hon. the Prime Minister that he can now eliminate some of the problems and lead us to a position where we can get away from these problems, problems which could result in a very serious situation. The hon. member spoke for 20 minutes and said virtually nothing. I have tried to deal briefly with the few points that he did make.

† Mr. Speaker, I believe the central problem which was raised by the hon. the Prime Minister, if one crystallizes out the whole thing, is that he was saying that it was a question of leadership which has been given to all the peoples of South Africa. It all comes down to the question of leadership. South Africa is being led by the White community. There is White leadership in South Africa. Whites are leading South Africa at present. White people are the natural leaders established by history and, by all the facts of existence in our country, we are the leading community. I have always stood for that and I stand for this entirely. We have brought to this country something we are attempting to graft onto the alien stock of Africa. That is what this debate is all about. We say we have no confidence in the Government because they have failed to see that that is the task which has been entrusted to the White community here.

Let us understand what the hon. the Prime Minister said when he quoted Van Wyk Louw. He made it quite clear that the leadership in this country is the leadership of Afrikaners. He specifically mentioned “die Afrikanervolk” and “die Engelse gedeelte, die volksdeel wat Engels is”.

Tame Boers.

Tame Boers? These words were used by the hon. Prime Minister. Since the Afrikaner people are in the leadership position in which they are, the onus is on them to convince all the groups in this country that their intentions are honourable and sincere. Only in that way are they at all going to be able to avoid the situation we are facing today which is a very serious situation indeed.

The leadership of the White community has led South Africa to very great achievements. The problem we are facing in this country today is that, because our achievements have been so great, because we have achieved so much and because we have created so much for all the groups, we are now faced with the challenge to continue to extend the benefits which derive from the factors we have built into the community life here in South Africa. I want to say to the hon. the Prime Minister, my friend the hon. the Minister of Agriculture and other hon. members on that side of the House that wealth is the goal of power and also the giver of power. The power we are talking about, the power people in this country are seeking, is the power to control the wealth. The challenge to White power in this country is to control the wealth of South Africa. That is where the challenge lies. The sharing of wealth in our economy is inevitable; it is going to come about. In the situation in which we live we have an enormous industrial complex developing; we have a fantastic economic life in which there is considerable expansion. Any expansion means more and more Black participation in the economy of South Africa. Every time a new factory is built, a thousand Black people and 200 White people find employment there. More and more Black people are involved in the wealth generating system of South Africa, and wealth is power. What we have to accept is that in this country power is at present passing from the hands of this Parliament which is the bastion of White power. We have to understand that. We are faced with the problem that we have to allow power to pass from our hands into other hands without the whole system of our State falling apart and degenerating into the sort of thing the hon. member for Innesdal was talking about, namely potential conflict and revolution here in our country. Because of the wealth which is diffusing into the public, the Black, Indian and Coloured people, power is now passing out of the hands of this Parliament. We have to accept and understand that. We have to allow that power to pass from our hands in such a way that those consequences which are too ghastly to contemplate are not visited upon us. That is the task which faces all of us, particularly the hon. the Prime Minister, because he has the power in his hands, the Cabinet and hon. members on that side of the House who constitute the Government of South Africa, because they will take the decisions. They must know, when they take decisions, that those decisions are not going to precipitate a crisis and revolution in this country. They just know that, if they do not take those decisions soon, this Parliament is going to become irrelevant in the whole political set-up in South Africa.

Yesterday evening the hon. the Prime Minister revealed his problem, and it is a very real problem. He has to take his party with him, and I think we understand his problem. Obviously a party of this size represents a great variety of opinion, a wide spectrum of opinion, but the members of that party have to go with the Prime Minister if he is to achieve anything. He does, however, face a challenge from inside that party. As he said, some of them come along with him, but perhaps a little unwillingly. He has to take them along, however. He has put the position to them and, as things stand now, because they are still in the party, one understands that they still support him.

The importance, to South Africa, of this hon. Prime Minister must not be underestimated. The challenge comes to him, in his party, not from those who want faster advancement, but from those who want to rein in the advancement and slow down the pace of change. If that happens, there can only be a reaction. Let me tell them that there are people in that party whom I know to be hesitant—to use a very friendly phrase—about the pace of change. Let us understand that change is something which cuts both ways. If there are changes, both sides are affected.

Do you see any change?

The hon. member asks: Do I see any changes? Does he not see changes? Are there no changes? If changes are made, if advances are made, if the development of the new policy commences and the new views of the National Party are implemented, are there going to be people who disagree with that and remain behind? That is the problem the hon. the Prime Minister faces, that there are people there who will not go along. [Interjections.] This is one of the problems which this entire country faces.

The hon. the Prime Minister has set himself a goal, and that goal is the accommodation of Black aspirations. I think that is a fair reflection of what he has set himself to do, accommodation in a political society, whether it is within our political society or related to our political society. What he as a Christian person has set himself as an ideal is to accommodate them on a basis which will give them satisfaction. As a Christian person he could do no less than that. There is nothing less he could accept. He would accept it for himself and would not deny it to anybody else. That is what has raised the expectations that everybody here has been talking about, the fact that he has said he will look anew at situations which are old situations in South Africa, “die ou beleid van die Nasionale Party”, the old things which were the cornerstones of NP policy, all the things that have changed, e.g. as a result of the Wiehahn and Riekert Commission reports and all the rest of them, the things which were the cornerstones of NP policy.

What is the point you are trying to make?

The point I want to make is that that hon. member, among others, faces the same challenge, and is he going to go along or is he going to stay behind? That is the question he has to answer.

He may go along.

He may go along. I shall say no more about that hon. member. Let us understand what is happening in our country, and let us be very clear about it. The word “change” and the idea of change is like the air on a summer evening. It is like the scent of rain in a very thirsty and dry land because the idea that is now permeating is that at least, after all the years in which there has been this insistence on separation, driving apart, pushing into separate areas and all this kind of thing as a result of the policies of the NP, something is now coming about to enable us to enter upon a new dispensation at the instance of the hon. the Prime Minister. At his instance there will be a new dispensation, a new idea and a new direction. There is no going back for the hon. the Prime Minister, none whatsoever. He cannot go back. There is no way he can go back.

Do you want to go back to the slums of Johannesburg?

One of the things which we have heard from hon. members opposite is that there is no real change. What are all these expectations that people are suddenly now creating? The Opposition, the Press and everybody else are suddenly being accused of creating expectations that are not justified. The expectations that are created arise from the actions of the Cabinet and the hon. the Prime Minister, and nobody else, and if they are disappointed and frustrated…

Like you.

I think I can say, with a great deal of truth, that I am one of the least frustrated and disappointed members in this House. [Interjections.] I thought I looked very nice this evening. If the desires and aspirations which have been raised for change, change which is not only overdue but justified, are frustrated and disappointed, we are entitled to say, and we are not expecting to be attacked for saying it, that the situation will arise that the hon. member for Innesdal so eloquently described, a situation in which there is this conflict potential between the different groups in our country and in which the revolutionary potential will build up and become stronger and stronger. No amount of talking, or not talking, on the part of the Opposition is going to make any difference. It is the Government who have talked. They have spoken. The hon. the Prime Minister has used the word.

There is no way in which the Government can go back, the Prime Minister can retreat or the NP can attempt to run away from the consequences of what they have said. If they do attempt that, the dire consequences will be those which the previous Prime Minister said were “too ghastly to contemplate”. I say again that if that happens this Parliament will become irrelevant. That would be the most serious thing that could happen to the political society in South Africa. If the struggle becomes such that the determination of Black people is so strong that they are going to take power, this Parliament becomes a bastion of White power which is to be stormed and taken. That is the problem we face. [Interjections.] That is the truth. Whether hon. members like to believe it, whether they want to peep through their fingers from a hidden world and do not want to see what the reality is, that is the truth. If this Parliament does not take steps to keep in tune with the changing circumstances, it becomes irrelevant and, when it becomes irrelevant, it is going to lose its use and it is going to be taken over and something is going to happen to it, although we do not know what.

Do you suggest we capitulate now or tomorrow?

I want to say to the hon. member who asked whether we should capitulate that we White people stand on the ramparts of the Western mind. We here in this Parliament are the people who stand at the very front of the defences of the Western World. That is where we are and that is our real position in history. One can hardly expect the West to appreciate that, because there has been a campaign launched and waged against us which that Government, in 30 years of trying, has not yet succeeded in turning back. It has not allowed the truth to come out, viz. that we stand on the ramparts of the Western mind. The leadership which we can give should be given to our people in our country if we are going to succeed. In other words, what we are going to have to do is to succeed in carrying over to the Black people in our country the values for which we stand. Those values are the values which are enshrined in a capsule, which are contained in the system which is enshrined in this Parliament. The whole idea of democracy is representation and that people have the right to express themselves. We have to face the fact that in our country we have to evolve a new system. That system will not be evolved by us alone. I want to say to the hon. the Prime Minister that I thought the concept of the president’s council which he mentioned here this afternoon is something which is very interesting indeed. This is something we will have to consider very carefully indeed.

Why is it that, having said all that, we have no confidence in the Government. It is because they do not see and will not admit that there is change and that there is a necessity for change. They will not admit it, because their own political power rests on the idea that change cannot come about quickly and forcefully to include more people in the political system which is at present operating in South Africa. In other words, they are not looking at reability. When we talk about the Black people in the urban areas, I believe the fundamental issue that has to be decided is whether the Black people are there permanently. The hon. the Prime Minister gave a partial answer to this today when he said there were people there who were not “tuis-landgebonde”.

No. I said “if there are” … [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to accept that “if there are”. Our own party, in our constitutional proposals, have said we propose that a commission should be instituted to find out if there are. However, if there are, certain consequences follow. Those consequences cannot be avoided. Those consequences lie directly across the path that the NP has followed right through until now. That is the point that I wish to make. As of now there is no understanding and no admission on the part of hon. members opposite that that can happen, nor a facing of the consequences. It is a question of preparing the minds of one’s people and of one’s voters …

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question? Can the hon. member explain to me why growing numbers of Black people in the cities send their children to schools in the Black States, especially secondary schools?

Mr. Speaker, my answer to that would be that it was my impression that secondary education has been developed in the homeland areas at the expense of the Black urban areas.

Quite right.

Therefore the facilities exist to a much larger extent in those Black homeland areas than they do in the big cities. [Interjections.]

I inquired into that, and that was not the reasons given.

Mr. Speaker, that was the policy that was deliberately embarked upon by the NP some years ago in order to make sure that those people—to quote the exact words of former Minister Blaar Coetzee—should not become too comfortable in the urban areas. In other words they should ultimately go back to their homelands and think back to their homelands. [Interjections.]

Bill, you do not believe your own story.

I believe that very strongly. [Interjections.]

That is a political argument you are using now.

I want to point out to the hon. the Prime Minister that there is a new element which is embodied in this permanent urban Black population. That is the middle class. I believe that the middle class is going to hold the key to the future of this country politically. If one does not encourage and recognize the permanence of that group of people where they live one is creating the situation of revolution to which the hon. member for Innesdal referred earlier. Revolutions are born in the middle class. That is where they come from. They do not come from the down-trodden peasants, the poor and the oppressed. They are born in the middle class among the people who have the wealth to fund that kind of revolution, among the people who have the organizational ability to follow it through and to manipulate it to their advantage when such a revolution takes place. The point I want to make to the hon. the Prime Minister is that he is now sitting on a razor-edge because we are creating such a class of people. They are there in increasing numbers. Everyday, because of relaxation of certain provisions in the policy of the NP more and more people, including the Black people, are being allowed to participate in business and all kinds of things. In that way frustration is created. If one frustrates them politically one is creating the condition to which one has no answer. There is no answer. If one creates that class of people—and they are there now in increasing numbers—and one frustrates them politically one has no answer to that problem. There is none whatever.

However, what is the remedy of the hon. he Prime Minister? The remedy he gave us today is a constellation of States. A constellation of States; great new idea! Lovely idea!

That is not such a new idea.

We know it is not a new idea. [Interjections.]

It is not a new idea. We introduced an idea of a confederation here in this House when Mr. John Vorster was still the Prime Minister. That was during the first Prime Minister’s Vote after the 1977 election. I was considerably surprised to see the hon. the Prime Minister on television one evening speaking about his constellation of States. Behind him on the … [Interjections.]

Oh please Bill, why do you not paint your balls red? [Interjections.]

People in my constituency asked me what the hon. the Prime Minister was doing now …

With your balls! [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I want to put it to the hon. the Prime Minister now that I was so angry to see that that I sent him a telegram the following day.

Give my balls back! [Interjections.]

If I had thought of that one, I would have said it. [Interjections.] This is such a departure from the established policy of the NP and of all we have heard, viz. that there must be independence, that they must go in their own direction, in their own orbit, that I said to the hon. the Prime Minister that it was an attempt to use our policy. I asked whether the National Party was not ashamed of ploughing with another man’s heifer. [Interjections.] I also told him that this was the “ou gewone Nasionale boereverneukery”, the old story they dish up. [Interjections.] I told him I would lend him my tinker toy the next time he wanted to get it right so that he could show the people what it really looks like. The Prime Minister sent me a letter in return, but I must be fair and say that he stated in the letter that if he started thinking about people to advise him on the future of South Africa, I would obviously be the last person he would think about.

Hear, hear!

When I sent my telegram, I must say I felt jolly good, because I had got rid of all my frustrations, and I have no doubt that when the hon. the Prime Minister had finished his letter, he felt the same. The hon. the Prime Minister spoke about the Black communities in the urban areas and said that they would be allowed, if they were established there, to take part in the constellation, the confederation, or whatever he was talking about. What is important is the flow of power. I have demonstrated this before. What is important, is that each group of people which has its own power base must protect itself in that power base, and power must flow from that base to any area where co-ordination, consultation and joint decision-making is taking place. There is no way one can escape that. I venture to predict that those of us in the commission are going to find a situation very similar to this one. We are not going to escape the consequences, because if one is looking for a guarantee for the White community, as for other communities, to secure for them that future towards which we are moving …

There is no guarantee.

There is a guarantee if one has one’s own power base that cannot be taken away from one. If every group could have that, and if power could flow from those power bases to a central area, for co-ordination and consultation purposes, one would have a safe political base.

Mr.

Speaker, may I ask the hon. member how one protects oneself against the majority?

One protects oneself against the majority, because one has one’s own political power base here whilst others have theirs there. They will all have their own power base. Only certain powers will be delegated to the areas where consultation and co-operation have to take place. [Interjections.] This is entirely feasible. Those hon. members can shake their heads. I want to have it recorded in Hansard that they are shaking their heads, because when the commission reaches its conclusions, and their proposed model looks something like this, they are going to shake their heads the other way. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask you a personal favour. This party, on this side of the House, has pioneered the idea of a joint or dual system, a federal arrangement in the so-called White area of South Africa in which various groups of people are present, and a confederal arrangement in Southern Africa, the constellation or whatever the hon. the Prime Minister may talk about, with a structured arrangement. I want to present this model to the library of Parliament, so that when the time comes and research is done, people will be able to see whose ideas these were and what the realities of political discussion and political decisions were. The NRP’s name will then be attached to this model, and nobody will be able to take that away from us.

Hear, hear!

Mr. Speaker … [Interjections.] … as a friendly gesture let me lay the balls on the Table. What we demand from the NP is that they stand up and be counted when it comes to change, because they know change is coming. [Interjections.]

Oh please!

Not one of them, even that hon. member who says, “Oh please”, is going to sit there and say there are not going to be monumental changes in the structure of South Africa. That is going to come. [Interjections.] So what we demand of that party is that its members do, as in the words of the prophet who said: Lift up your voice, be not afraid, say it to the cities of Judah—behold, your God! So we say to those hon. members, every last, single one of them sitting in those benches: Let them lift up their voices. Let my friend there, the hon. member for Parys, lift up his voice, not be afraid and say to his own people—behold their goal which is a goal of change! Because I do not believe that any of them are going to do it, I support the motion of no confidence in this Government.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Mooi River made much of the point that power should be granted to other groups as well, but surely this Government is the greatest exponent of the transfer of power to the other groups. How else did those three independent national Black states come into being? The hon. the Prime Minister has already replied adequately on the question of the eventual idea of confederation. If that idea can be accommodated in the constellation of Southern Africa States, without detracting from self-determination, there is nothing wrong with that. However, I think he received an adequate reply to the complex speech which he has just made when hon. members on this side shook their heads, for those same arguments were also presented to the voters during the by-election in Worcester and they also shook their heads. As a result of that, that hon. party lost its deposit by four votes. [Interjections.]

However, I wish to concentrate more specifically on the official Opposition. I wish to join other members on this side of the House in congratulating the hon. the Leader of the Opposition on his election to that high and responsible office. The ability of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to reason logically is undoubtedly part of his merit, but still no guarantee for success, for two important reasons. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is a logical academic, but in his arguments he does not always keep the practical realities in mind. In a housing motion in this House on 3 March 1978, the hon. Leader alleged that slums and squatter housing were the general rule in the Third World, and because South Africa was part of the Third World, we should accept those conditions here as well. I quote from Hansard 1978, col. 2318, where the hon. the Leader of the Opposition says the following—

No one can deny that academically this is a logical argument and I concede that to the hon. Leader, his mistake lies in the fact that while the rest of the Third World consists of more or less homogeneous communities, South Africa is a heterogeneous community, with great differences in development and wealth which happen to coincide with a difference in colour. If these differences were to be further accentuated by slum housing, one would actually be stirring up revolution. I say logical argument does not guarantee success, for the core of the PFP, which the hon. Leader must lead, is not interested in logical argument, but in political expediency. If one is patriotic and logical, one does not advise friendly people against investing in one’s country, as the hon. members for Parktown and Sea Point have done.

You know that it is untrue. [Interjections.]

It is in black and white. On 3 March 1978 (Hansard 1978, col. 2279) the hon. member for Musgrave referred to the Government’s constitutional plan—

What kind of logic is that, Sir? The hon. member is continually making exaggerated demands for democracy and democratic rights on the Government, even in the treatment of saboteurs and terrorists. Nevertheless, in an address before the University of the Witwatersrand on 13 December, she abandons all logical principals of democratic government when she says—

This borders on flagrant instigation to break laws and an attempt to force the Government through extra-parliamentary action. It is also directly in conflict with what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition writes in his book South African Options, where he says on page 2—

A warning is not instigation.

I am quoting it with approval. It is almost as though the hon. Leader had the hon. member for Houghton in mind when he wrote that paragraph.

You are talking nonsense and you know that. [Interjections.]

Without detracting from the respect which I have for the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, I want to tell him that his election as leader is probably an act of political expediency, for the logical leader of that party, the man who represents the heart and the attitude of that party, is not the hon. elected leader, but the hon. member for Pinelands. [Interjections.]

The pink priest!

That hon. member takes every opportunity to display his racial intolerance and to accuse the Government, in an absolutely prejudiced manner, of oppression. In spite of the fact that the hon. member has appointed himself as the champion of others, they do not trust him, as is evident from many statements by Black leaders. [Interjections.]

Mention one of them.

Chief Buthelezi. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition will probably find that the “clique of radicals”, to whom the hon. member for Yeoville referred, are not easily satisfied.

You are so wrong, so blind and so hopeless.

Every voter, including hon. members of the Opposition, are entitled to ask the Government where it is going. The answer to that runs like a golden thread through 32 years of NP rule, i.e. multi-nationality and the separate development of those nations. The question now is whether that policy has been successful or whether it should be abandoned, as the Opposition parties are urging. The immediate question arising from that is how the success of a policy is measured. A good criterion would be to compare the results of the NP’s policy to the results or anticipated results of the Opposition’s policy. This is a very difficult task, for it is left to every one who is interested to work out a policy for the Opposition according to the general principals contained in the book South African Options, written by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and a co-author. On page 133 of the book the hon. the Leader of the Opposition writes that it should under no circumstances be regarded as a blueprint. These are merely fine-sounding words which actually mean that he does not wish to be held responsible for what he said there.

I should like to comment briefly on three central concepts contained in the book. On page 93, and again on page 112, the author states that the basic problem with separate development is that one cannot separate politically that which is economically interdependent. The question is: Why not? Why can it not be done? Surely economic interdependence can in fact promote political responsibility and a reasonable attitude towards one another. For that very reason the Government has committed itself irrevocably to the economic emancipation of all non-Whites in South Africa. In the second place I wish to comment on the groups who will be invited to attend the so-called national convention which is referred to on page 113 of the book. In this respect the hon. gentlemen are laying down two requirements. They say there should, in the first place, be absolute freedom of movement. In the second place, they say there should be absolute freedom of grouping formation. According to the ideal of an open society, that party must then regard it as the highest degree of success if the racial groups are completely integrated and form interest groups across racial barriers without race playing any role whatever in the process.

On page 93, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition declares that the urban Blacks alone outnumber the Whites two to one. Add to this that it is just possible that political manipulation could play a role in the forming of groups. The logical conclusion is that the possibility exists that not a single White may make it to this national convention. In other words, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition could have omitted all the complexities which he described in that book and admitted openly that they are in favour of Black majority government and a system of one man, one vote, for there are hon. members in that party, including the hon. member who is shaking his head, who admit that this is the logical conclusion of its policy. After all, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition states on page 22 that he advocates full and equal citizenship for all in the same government, irrespective of race; or is he trying to mislead people with words?

Thirdly, I wish to refer to the convention itself, where the major point of negotiation will be the minority veto. The Black man will not accept that, of course, because it would frustrate his will; for anyone who fails to take account of power politics anywhere in Africa is being naïve. With regard to the protection of the minority groups, of which the Whites are only one, the prospects are discouraging, too, for on page 7 it is specifically alleged that the protection of minority rights will be a transitional measure rather than a long-term protection.

In certain circumstances. You are quoting me out of context.

To give these two authors their due, I must say that they took a lot of trouble. In a book consisting of 171 pages, they used no fewer than 317 borrowed quotations and opinions. I can come to only one conclusion, and that is that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition “was a victim of many desperate studies”. [Interjections.] In other words, this means that we have nothing to which we can compare the NP policy, except its own results. When I talk of results, I mean the sum total of results, for there is no perfect community anywhere on this earth. After 32 years of National Party rule, one cannot describe South Africa in any other terms than as a miracle of promise and an island of stability in a disintegrating world. It is not I who says so, but one of the Government’s fiercest critics. The NP is a party which develops people in a manner unequalled in the world. Only a malicious person and a stranger in Jerusalem will deny this, but developed people need a different dispensation from that for underdeveloped people. The NP is actively dealing with the measures which the Government is taking now, and which opponents deride as being cosmetic and the collapse of the structures of apartheid. We are accommodating and stimulating that development.

Mr. Speaker, after the speech to which we have just listened I am sure hon. members will agree that the hon. member for Namakwaland is probably the last member in this House who should talk about logic. What we have listened to has been a jumble of misinterpretations and wrong deductions and if, indeed, the hon. member for Namakwaland has read the book written by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, he certainly has not understood it. This is not the time, however, to try to educate him on those matters at this stage. [Interjections.]

During this debate there has been a good deal of comment about creating high expectations in the field of change and the dangers implicit if those expectations are not fulfilled. The hon. the Prime Minister this afternoon, the hon. the Minister of Transport Affairs, the hon. the Minister of Mines and other Government spokesmen have been quick to point out that some of the expectations have been the result of misinterpretations of Government attitudes on the part of the Opposition and its Press. I do not want to get involved in the pros and cons of that argument, but one thing is clear and after three days of debate, during this no confidence debate, it is abundantly clear that the Government is absolutely hidebound to abstract ideology and that any changes it might feel compelled to make are going to have to be made within the framework of the ideology, i.e. the ideology of separate development.

In that sense, welcome though some of the envisaged changes may be, they are bound to fall far short of meeting the needs of South Africa at the present time. There is no evidence as yet that the Government is really willing to rethink or to remodel, let alone to jettison, its ideology in the face of the realities of the South African situation. Indeed, it continues instead to try to adapt and to twist the realities in futile attempts to fit them into the impossible demands of the ideology. Nowhere is this more evident than if one looks at the Government’s approach to the whole question of homeland development and land consolidation in South Africa, which is the cornerstone of their race policies.

The history of this whole matter is revealing. The Government inherited a situation where these tribal areas were set aside for exclusive Black occupation and it also inherited a situation where there was an obligation in terms of the 1936 legislation to add to the land area involved. But nowhere along the line was there ever any intention on the part of previous Governments or, indeed, this Government until the late ’50s, that these tribal areas would form the basis of independent, sovereign States. They were merely protected areas, underdeveloped areas of South Africa and they were part and parcel of the rest of South Africa. But in the early 1960s, in terms of the ideology of separate development, the NP decreed that these tribal areas would be developed in future along strict ethnic lines and that they would be developed as the basis for future independent, sovereign States. Furthermore, the NP decreed that this development would provide the solution to the race problem and meet the political aspirations of the Black people of South Africa. That was the new turn of events at the end of the 1950s and at the beginning of the 1960s. This has become and is the basic premise of the NP as their solution to the race issue in South Africa. In my view this is a premise which is totally artificial. It is an impractical premise, an impossible premise and also, I believe, a dangerous premise. Furthermore, I believe it is a premise which has generated problem after problem on an escalating basis for South Africa and to the detriment of South Africa. By the policy which they have adopted and by their obsession in regard to the policy of separate development, they have said to the Black people of South Africa and are still saying to them: “Your citizenship and your nationality relate not to the whole of South Africa, but to the areas which we believe are those of your origin, and the fulfilment of your political aspirations will be confined to these areas.” The fact is that the very worst thing this Government could have done was to link citizenship and political rights in South Africa with the ownership and occupation of land. That is the very worst thing any Government could have done in South Africa. In these circumstances and against the background of Government policy the majority Black population of this country will understandably never be satisfied with the land given it, unless that land is at least somewhere in proportion to the ratio of their numbers compared with the rest of the South African population. The situation has therefore arisen where the Government has increasingly been caught up in a web of its own making. The frantic and frenzied attempts at the present time for the greater consolidation of homeland areas is merely another but very significant are in that web.

In the beginning, perhaps, it all seemed so neat, so tidy and so simple. One simply told each ethnic group that its aspirations would be met in its own homeland. But soon problems arose. In the first place, the fact the protagonists of separate development have come to loathe over the years, but from which they have been unable to escape, is that they were offering 80% of the population of South Africa a land area of some 13% to 15% of the total land area of this country. Secondly, there was the fact that no single homeland or independent State could be economically viable and each would be considerably dependent upon the Republic for providing employment opportunities for its people and for subsidizing even basic regional services. Thirdly, most of the homeland areas were so fragmented that they posed extreme problems when viewed as future independent States.

This is the sort of background, and the reaction to this sort of situation, to these problems, came from diverse quarters. In the first place it came from the Blacks themselves, who immediately saw in it something which was totally without equity. Even at the present time President Mangope and President Matanzima have made it perfectly clear that they are anything but satisfied with the area of land allocated to them, to say nothing of the attitude of the non-independent homeland leaders. Secondly, reaction to these problems came from the outside world, which was fully conscious of the fallacies inherent in the whole concept of separate development and has rejected it out of hand. Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly of all, was the reaction of academics, Nationalist academics and others, who were concerned about the inequities and have been seeking changes in order to try to sustain a better moral basis for the entire concept which is the basis of Government policy.

So we had a further development: In an attempt to meet these problems the Government reacted. Once again it reacted not by looking again at its ideological plan in an attempt to conform to reality, but it reacted rather by trying to bend the realities to conform with ideology. In 1973 and 1975 we therefore had the consolidation plans of the Government involving the removal and replacement of Black spots and so-called badly situated land involving a total of 945 000 ha. If one adds this figure to the land which was still to be purchased at that time in terms of the 1936 Act, the total was something in excess of two million ha of land. By the end of 1978 some 642 000 ha had still to be acquired in terms of the 1936 Act and 814 000 ha in terms of the consolidation proposals. The total cost of all this, at 1975 prices, was estimated by Benbo as approximately R800 million, R417 million for land purchases and R380 million for the resettlement of people, let alone for providing the infrastructure which would have to go with it. It was estimated at the time that more than 175 000 families or one million people would have to be moved. But it would appear that as at the end of 1978 approximately 642 000 ha still remained to be purchased in terms of the 1936 Act and 814 000 ha in terms of the consolidation proposals, a total of 1,472 million ha. It soon became apparent that, even if these proposals were fully implemented, the same objections to the concept of separate independence would persist. The Blacks, threatened anew with loss of citizenship in the rest of South Africa, were not impressed. The outside world was not impressed and similarly those same academics and other observers were still unable to accept the inadequate and fragmented areas as providing any sort of realistic acceptable moral base for independent States.

In addition, there was the overriding belief, which I believe still persists in Government circles, that if there could be a promise of more meaningful and additional land consolidation, non-independent homeland leaders, who had shown a disinterest in the whole concept, and in some instances had rejected it out of hand, could perhaps now be persuaded to move towards accepting independence. I believe that is still the main motivating force behind the Government’s attempts to consolidate the homeland areas. In other words, it could be and can be used like the carrot before the donkey. So, we have the hon. the Prime Minister’s announcement that he would be prepared, if necessary, to go beyond the confines of the Act of 1936 and we have now had, in addition, the appointment and the operation of the Van der Walt Commission on Consolidation. It is not for me to prejudge the recommendations of that commission, but it must be pointed out that the frantic and frenzied activities of the Van der Walt Commission, and its subcommittees, around South Africa over the last six months, are a direct result of Government ideology. I think the country should know that. So, too, is all the unease and uncertainty that the operation of these committees have caused amongst Blacks and Whites around the country. That, too, is a direct result of Government ideology. I do not want to minimize the task with which the Van der Walt Commission has been charged, nor do I want to minimize the energy and the sincerity with which it is being undertaken, but I am bound to say that I believe the commission has an impossible task unless it is allowed considerable flexibility in terms of the Government’s ideological commitments.

If land occupation continues to be linked with citizenship rights and nationality for Blacks, and if consolidation is going to involve the uprooting and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people, I believe the commission’s problems will be insuperable. We, on these benches, believe that the Whites have an obligation at least to meet the commitments to the tribal areas in terms of the Act of 1936 and, where tidiness and other local and regional factors demand it, to go beyond that commitment where necessary. We do not, however, believe that South Africa is committed to a grandiose scheme of massive land consolidation at any cost. If the Government does embark on such a scheme, I believe the country must know that it is because of its absolute commitment to its ideological pipedreams, because only in the name of ideology will such a grandiose scheme become necessary. It is neither realistic nor is it practical or necessary if one takes a sensible view of the issue at this stage. While it is necessary to meet our commitments in terms of the Act of 1936, and while it may be necessary to continue to give protection to tribally owned and operated land for the forseeable future, surely Black aspirations for acquiring additional land should be met by allowing them the same opportunity for acquiring land as any other South African and allowing them to exercise their rights of citizenship in the areas where they are economically active. This is surely the basis of a sensible arrangement that could be made. Allow the Black people to compete and to acquire land in the rest of South Africa. We talk about having a free enterprise economy. So let us allow the Black people to compete on this basis to acquire land where White people are prepared to sell land to them. We must give them the facilities to do so. We must give them the same facilities, the same Land Bank loans, and allow them to participate in a normal and reasonable way, instead of forcing the country into a mass programme of land consolidation entailing the acquisition of land at enormous cost to the country and the threatened removal and uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people. If the Government is not prepared to consider this approach as a national policy, let it be flexible enough, even at this stage, to have diversity in its approach to the matter and allow the regions to adopt a more open attitude to land ownership. Let us take, e.g., the problems of Natal, problems associated with a meaningful consolidation of kwaZulu. On the basis of existing thinking, I believe these problems are insuperable unless there is a major change in thinking. There are some 40 fragments of kwaZulu scattered throughout Natal. In terms of the Government’s 1975 consolidation proposals it believes that it can reduce those 40 fragments to some 10 fragments, but it is still going to be done at an enormous cost, the cost of moving people and of acquiring land, and in the end one is still going to have an unmanageable kwaZulu entity.

I want to put a few suggestions to the Government and the chairman of the commission. Why not declare Natal an open area as an experiment? Why not allow the Black people of Natal the opportunity of buying land where Whites are prepared to sell? This would certainly be in line with the free enterprise economy to which we all subscribe. This would provide the Blacks with the same facilities and they would then be under no disadvantage. Why can we not do that? Instead of this, the commission and the Government are embarking upon a plan of committees sitting all over the province trying to buy land and looking at maps and confronted with what I believe in the end is a totally impossible situation. I believe it would have an effect if this were allowed. In a competitive land market it would encourage better farming methods on the part of Black farmers. I also believe that the money the Government would be spending, the money it is apparently prepared to spend and may have to spend on a massive and meaningless land consolidation programme, could be far better spent in providing for rural development and the creation of the infrastructure that is necessary where such development is most needed. I believe that this sort of approach should be amongst the alternatives to massive consolidation which the Government ought to be considering were it not so totally bound up with inflexible ideological considerations.

They do not understand free enterprise.

Yes, I do not think they do understand free enterprise. However, I believe that this is the sort of flexibility which is going to be necessary if that commission is to complete its work and produce some sort of meaningful report for South Africa.

You are like a gramophone.

The hon. gentleman can perhaps make his speech tomorrow.

So one is confronted again with the straitjacket of ideology. The reaction which comes from the hon. member for Pretoria Central indicates exactly the same thing. He cannot think beyond the blinkers of ideology. The moment somebody tells him to think outside of the policy of separate development, he is lost in confusion. When one talks about the ideology of separate development, one must realize that it is this which more than anything else has caused most of the problems in South Africa at the present time. It is an ideology which is anathema to the vast majority of South Africans and which has estranged us from the rest of the civilized world. It is an ideology which emphasizes and enforces racial differences and divisions at the very time when we in South Africa should be working towards bringing people together, should be seeking unity and should be seeking common ground. Moreover, the whole straitjacket of the philosophy of separate development is the exclusive brain child of the NP which seeks to impose it on the rest of South Africa. Surely at this time in our history, when the Government conceives that there is need for change and when its spokesmen tell us that apartheid is dead, it should be prepared to show some flexibility in regard to the ideological framework in which the doctrine of apartheid was created and in which it has thrived for a number of years with such disastrous consequences for South Africa. However, the Government does not show that flexibility. It is this very inflexibility in the general approach to a change of ideology in South Africa which is sufficient in itself to justify the motion of no confidence in the Government which has been moved.