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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing Archives of Author »Terry Bell«
SA Govt’s historic millstone
Government claims to have united labour, business and organised civil society behind its “new plan” to reverse economic decline has triggered considerable — and justified — cynicism in much of the trade union movement. Civil service unions, denied their agreed to and budgeted for pay rises, are especially aggrieved. “More empty words” is a […]
Ending up ‘wanted by both the Communist Party & the police’
October 20, 2020
(Also available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-10-13-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-wanted-by-the-police-and-the-communists/) The Congress leadership of the revolution had been arrested at Rivonia and was in jail, awaiting trial, a fate that was also to befall the members of the Liberal/Socialist League/African Resistance Movement. But our officially unsanctioned groups were still free, and we were determined that militant resistance, especially the sabotage of […]
Would-be revolutionaries & wasps in the Magaliesberg
October 20, 2020
(Also available on: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-10-01-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-a-revolutionary-magaliesberg-route-march-punctuated-by-wasp-stings/) The social milieau from which I emerged into anti-apartheid politics was rather different from that of my comrades in the Congress of Democrats (COD). Even those who also came from Germiston came effectively — and literally — from the other sides of the tracks in that mining and railway hub. And […]
Don’t blame the virus
October 20, 2020
(A version of this appeared in City Press on October 20, 2020) Economic recovery. Economic growth. That is what is now being promoted in the wake of the devastation caused by the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. But what is really required in South Africa is social reconstruction to try to remedy the extraordinary damage […]
Why we don’t need a post-Covid ‘new normal’
September 19, 2020
(Also available at: https://www.news24.com/fin24/opinion/inside-labour-covid-19-has-only-made-billionaires-richer-20200918) Six months ago, the gross, even terrifying, social and economic inequalities that were regarded as normal around the world were highlighted when Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the Word Health Organisation. Since then, those inequalities have become even more gross and terrifying. Latest research reveals that the very rich have […]
A tangled web in the nascent underground
September 18, 2020
(Also available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-09-18-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-a-tangled-web-in-the-nascent-underground/) Were it not for the seriousness of the matters on the ground, the situation among the ANC supporting opposition in Johannesburg in 1962 could have provided material for a slapstick comedy. There were police spies, SA Communist Party and secret Trotskyist cell members all belonging to the same organisation. Linked to […]
Shorthand, flyposting & a lesson learned
September 5, 2020
(Also available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-08-31-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-shorthand-flyposting-and-a-lesson-learnt/) Being white and male in the South Africa of 1962, I was doubly privileged. And I also possessed a degree of cheek that got me onto an all-expenses paid journalism course in Cape Town, effectively to learn shorthand. There I met up with some people who would, over the years, become […]
The global deficit is democracy
September 5, 2020
The stark, frightening reality of the consequences of Covid-19 and the reactions to it are becoming increasingly obvious. And no more so than in the estimates for the rate of unemployment in a country already recognised the world’s worst in the jobless stakes. An official level of 50% – half the adult population between the […]
Terry Bell Writes 
October 31, 2020
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