ing
of negotiations, he then traversed the whole of the subsequent
negotiations. Much of the ground that he covered has already been
recorded in the preceding pages, but it is important to emphasize
several points in his speech. First, he insisted on the fact that the
producers were within their rights to close down, once the receipts
from sales did not cover the operating costs in South Africa: this
followed from the correspondence of the previous August. 'If the
Minister still thinks we did not enter into a binding agreement, he has
an easy remedy. Under the original contract the Minister can penalize
the De Beers company for closing down. Let him impose the penalties,
and we are quite ready to go to law and the court will decide.' He
returned to the point again when he was dealing with the charge that
the Minister was not 'officially informed' of the intention of the
producers to close down—a point which arose in connexion with the
interview with the Press and not with the statement to the Assembly:
.
. . What the Minister says is extremely misleading. He says that he was
not officially informed of the position. Let us take this 'officially
informed'. As I have explained to you, we were within our legal rights,
and are now, in closing down. We did not do it willingly. I have never
performed a harder task than to close down De Beers mines. It was my
ambition to keep going, and the Minister has frustrated my endeavours.
The Minister's statement is incomprehensible. What better official
information can any Minister get than to have the chairman of the
company, accompanied by two other directors, calling on him and saying
'here is our position. We intimate to you that we have to close down.'
Does the Minister prefer a letter from the office boy, or what? Surely
when I, as chairman, accompanied by Sir Robert Kotze and another
colleague, take full responsibility, and tell him what our position is,
he cannot say afterwards, 'I have had no official information at all'.
The Minister is quite right in one thing. When the Minister says that
we did not ask for his permission to close down, he is quite correct.
We did not ask his permission. There is no reason to ask the Minister's
permission. We were within our rights in closing down. We could have
closed down without saying anything to the Minister at all. The
Minister knew the position. In terms of the agreement of July last, his
consent was not needed nor was it requested. But we felt it was our
duty to keep the Minister fully posted, and even to fall in with his
wishes as far as possible. We explained the position fully to the
Minister; we told him that the financial position of the producers and
the bad outlook in the diamond market made it desirable for the
producers to close down at the end of February. The Minister asked if
we could not make it 31 March, or something to that effect, and
therefore in order to show that not only did we feel it our duty to
keep the Minister fully posted, but because we wanted to
