February | 2020 | Terry Bell Writes

Browsing All Posts published on »February, 2020«

Declarations of war & pie in the sky

February 28, 2020

South African finance minister Tito Mboweni's 2020 Budget was a classic example of pie in the sky and it therefore — and unsurprisingly — triggered declarations of war from the labour movement. The only fulsome support seems to have come from from those at the top of the financial pile.

FW de Klerk has so much more to apologise for

February 20, 2020

There is nothing new in former apartheid president FW de Klerk's latest denialist comments, nor in the belated apology that followed it. He has never changed, nor has he told the truth about so much, especially about the massacre of five children in Mthatha in 1993.

The potentially explosive reality of joblessness

February 19, 2020

While some commentators clutch at straws of optimism, citing unchanged quarterly unemployment statistics, the reality is that what exists is not just a crisis, it is a tragedy of massive proportions with socially explosive potential.

Statistical facts and reality

February 18, 2020

It is necessary to look behind the bald unemployment statistics to discover the truly frightening reality. An "official" rate of joblessness at 29.1% if far fromn the more accurate "expanded" figure of 38.7%. And even that does not reflect the true measure of unemployment in South Africa.

The chequered history of Valentine’s Day

February 13, 2020

The major problem with St Valentine's Day is that nobody is sure who Valentine was or even if a single martyr of that name existed. But for the commercial success of the day, we have neither church nor pope to thank; that honour belongs to Ester Howland.