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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All Posts filed under »Inside Labour Column«
Spin, myths and The Market
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
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
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.
Time to learn lessons — & face reality
November 29, 2015
True shopfloor democracy and the tolerance of difference may be the only hope left to halt a slide toward irrelevance for South Africa's major trade union federation. And there are lessons to be learned from recent events in Britain.
SA education: testing, love & ANA
September 27, 2015
To test or not to test? That is not the question. But it is the way the current row about basic education has largely been presented in South Africa. And it is a disaster in the making.
Coping with the robot revolution
September 21, 2015
If the rise of robots — the spread of automation — is killing jobs and threatening the world with disaster, how can this be seen as potentially beneficial? It’s a question that is frequently asked and seldom answered. But we should welcome developments that minimise drudgery and that produce more and better products more cheaply and efficiently — however, only if they benefit us all.
The foulbrood threat to Africa
September 13, 2015
South Africa’s more than R7 billion a year fruit industry is threatened with potentially massive job and financial losses. It is a looming crisis that calls for urgent and comprehensive action at governmental level before the threat, still restricted to the Western Cape province, can spread.
What solution to a world in crisis?
September 3, 2015
The most important lesson to learn: The very developments that are starting to make most of humanity redundant, causing horrendous suffering and social and economic dislocation around the world could become the means to collective — and truly democratic — decision making.
Terry Bell Writes 
December 19, 2015
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