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MR. J. A. P. VAN DER MERWE (Vredefort) deprecated sending the Bill
to a Select Committee, arguing that the House itself should decide it.
He referred to the difficulties experienced by farmers in the Free State.
If a farmer refused to allow a Native to farm on the share system
he simply refused to work. There were thousands of Natives on the farms there
who hired ground and did little work. The farmers had to keep their children
at home to do the work. Some of the Natives hired ground, did some sowing,
then went to work in Johannesburg, and paid the owner of the farm
half what he reaped from the harvest. That was not satisfactory.
He was pleased to see the provisions the Minister proposed to make
in this regard, and expressed the hope that the Native
would only be tolerated among the whites as a labourer. The Bill would meet
what he considered a great want, and, as it was an urgent matter,
he hoped the proposal for a Select Committee would not be agreed to.


Third Reading Debate.

SIR LIONEL PHILLIPS (Yeoville): But why should a Bill of this sort
be brought before them now? The Government in the past had not been bashful
in the appointing of Commissions, and one question he would ask was why,
in this important matter, the Government had not appointed a Commission
to take all the evidence and then come to the House with a measure which
the House would have to approve of. Instead of that, they were cancelling
the rights the Natives had in South Africa, and creating a very awkward hiatus
between the time the Commission would be appointed and the time the Commission
could define the areas which would be regarded as white areas and the areas
which would be regarded as native areas. That was the one serious blot