Browsing Archives of Author »Terry Bell«

Davos: dodging the cause of crisis

January 23, 2016

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The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, ended this week. And it failed to deal with the main theme it belatedly claimed to be this year’s focus: the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". This perhaps proves the aphorism: “The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”

Behind South Africa’s racist frenzy

January 13, 2016

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A bitterly fought election campaign is already underway in South Africa, even before the announced date of the 2016 local government poll. And racism, land and traditional law have become the major areas of contention.

The right to expropriate property

January 11, 2016

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The redistribution and expropriation of South African property — land being the prime example — has become a major electoral issue. And the country's much lauded constitution allows for expropriation of property in the public interest and only demands that justice applies.

A new year — and a new world ahead

January 10, 2016

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We are on the cusp of a time when all work could be done by machine. Yet there is little sign of any move to design or promote a system that can cope; that could ensure that the technological advances made can be utilised for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Instead, there is a grasping at myths of the past.

If We Must Die

December 21, 2015

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Book review: If We Must Die by Stanley Manong. This is a major myth buster; a massively detailed autobiography that provides one of the finest insights to date of life in the ANC’s exiled uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) army in the crucial years following the 1976 student uprisings in South Africa.

Spin, myths and The Market

December 19, 2015

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The economic crunch experienced in South Africa last week provided a clear insight into the workings of the system and the limits, within a parliamentary democracy, of “people’s power”.

Where political expediency trumps education

December 13, 2015

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How better for a government facing severe criticism for it performance on the education front than to burnish its image by providing an illusion of improved school performance?

SA’s Cosatu: neither dead nor dying, but deeply troubled

December 8, 2015

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As South Africa's major labour federation, Cosatu, goes into its fourth decade, it does so carrying all the damaging detritus of the past that the leadership continues not to confront.