Terry Bell

Browsing Archives of Author »Terry Bell«

How anti-apartheid money funded the apartheid police

January 2, 2011

(Excerpted from Unfinished Business — South Africa, apartheid & truth, 2001/03) Operation Daisy was perhaps the most lucrative and efficient of the undercover operations conducted by the apartheid state’s security police (SB). It began in 1976 when the police spy and National Union of SA Students (Nusas) executive member, Craig Williamson met in Botswana with […]

Voodoo economics, journalism & human rights

January 1, 2011

(First published: February, 2006) It is time we all stopped bowing down at the altar of voodoo economics and acknowledged that our world is in crisis. And that this crisis — not of shortages, but of gluts — is a consequence of adherence to an almost religious belief that “the market” is some sort of […]

The high price of snobbishness

January 1, 2011

(First published: December 2007) St Vincent is the patron saint of the wine trade and, every year on “St Vincent’s day”, there is a tradition of calling for protection from “hail, frost, thirst and taxes”. The producers of the Cape winelands may this year add: “and snobbishness”. For South Africa’s wine producers — including “empowerment” […]

Xenophobia poisons the Ivoirian tangle

December 31, 2010

Most of the real lessons to be learned from the ongoing chaos in Côte d’Ivoire are being ignored, both by politicians and the popular media. Unless these are ;learned, and the background understtod, little that is happening there makes much sense.

Religion, opium and Karl Marx

December 29, 2010

“Religion is the opium of the people” is probably the most often quoted statement attributed to Karl Marx. But it distorts the views of Marx about religion because it is taken out of both literary and historic context.

Some food for thought in 2011

December 17, 2010

This is the last Inside Labour column for 2010. So I want to take this opportunity not only to wish all readers the best for the season and the coming year, but also to touch on some of the baggage — on a micro and macro level — being carried forward into 2011. At a […]

Farewell to an anti-apartheid battler

December 17, 2010

Tom Newnham, the man who probably did more than any other single individual in New Zealand to break rugby and other sporting ties with apartheid South Africa, died in Auckland this week, aged 84. And educator, editor, publisher, author and activist, he was the driving force behind the Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality (CARE) that, […]

’tis the season to…..?

December 10, 2010

It is surely time for serious reflection when the lunatic logic of the present system encourages us to spend — all too often on credit — to provide a boost to ailing economies when all this will do is provide a boost to banks and to the profits of importers, producer companies, wholesalers and retailers while the jobs slaughter continues.