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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All Posts published in »2011«
Sober reflection as SA’s CCMA turns 15
As the world teeters on the brink of a further slide toward what looks like economic chaos, South Africa's Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) has marked 15 years of existence. Director Nerine Kahn proudly noted that there was much to celebrate, but there was no celebration.
A 13-year legal travesty
November 4, 2011
In a scene reminiscent of the apartheid era, the final act in a 13-year travesty of justice drama began shortly after midnight on Thursday last week. Although there is no evidence that Donovan Leibrandt was at the scene either before during or after a 1998 arson attempt by another naval rating who died in the process, he was taken into custody this week to serve a four-year sentence on the basis of "common purpose".
A tangled web of race classification
October 30, 2011
South Africa’s 2011 census, bar the tallying, the number crunching and a few follow-ups, is over. And there were remarkably few difficulties encountered although, being South Africa, the question of race was once again raised — and it highlighted some peculiarly South African problems.
Labour thumbs down for SA medium-term budget
October 27, 2011
Overall, the South Africa's medium term budget policy statement has been given a fairly resounding thumbs down by the labour movement. And not just by trade union federations, officials, shop stewards and rank and file members; among the army of the recently retrenched are workers who gave a similar verdict as details of the statement became known.
Greed, capitalism and human nature
October 21, 2011
During social and economic crises over the past century and more, the same old argument about greed being the source of human ills has been trundled out.
…And so the postman goeth
October 15, 2011
On Monday, nostalgia, tinged with concern, will provide a worker and union undercurrent when the post office, with justifiable pride, celebrates the centenary of South Africa’s first delivery of mail by air. Similar feelings afflict postal workers the world over as this public service continues to be a job-loss victim of the internet and micro-chip […]
The threat of South Africa’s Info Bill
October 8, 2011
(First published September 23, 2011) Journalists think they are something special; that they should have more rights than other citizens and that the media somehow sees itself as above the law. These views have been expressed by a number of ANC members of parliament. They have been aired in defence of the Protection of State […]
Patriotism is no answer to a flawed system
October 8, 2011
Patriotism in whatever form is no answer to the current global crisis. Yet it continues to be clung to by both sides of the labour market coin — employers and employees, although both have different definitions of precisely what they mean.
Terry Bell Writes 
November 12, 2011
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