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News & Views by Terry Bell
A riveting & uncomfortable read
1986 by William Dicey (Umuzi, 304 pp) You, who forget your history are destined forever to repeat the horrors of the past. This, and words to similar effect have become something of a cliché. But although constantly repeated, this warning is seldom acted on. In South Africa, it is today not so much a case […]
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Democracy depends on sound information — and no state interference
February 1, 2021
Covid-19 highlighted a range of structural faults in society; faults we know more about because information was relayed to us. In the process, and with the advent of social media, we have also become increasingly aware of how information can be — and is — distorted and of the damage fake news can do. In […]
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Into exile — by jet to London
January 19, 2021
(Available on Daily Maverick at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-17-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-into-exile-and-the-streets-of-london/)When, following further arrests in South Africa in 1965, I decided to go into exile, I had no intention of going any further than Zambia or Tanzania. Naïvely, I saw myself joining the ANC army in exile and returning within five years as apartheid crumbled. Instead, I was ordered out […]
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A season of discontent looms
January 19, 2021
(First published on the Fin24 website) With justification, government ministers continue to praise nurses and other “frontline workers” fighting the battle against Covid-19. Yet, at the same time, they refuse to pay a wage rise agreed three years ago with unions representing these same workers and others in the health, education and other sectors. In […]
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A paean to the vanishing wild
December 22, 2020
To the Edges of Earth — A Journey into Wild Land by Peter Pickford (Bookstorm, 421 pages) (First published on News24, South Africa)Of the many books I have reviewed over decades, this is one of the few that stands out as an instant classic, a book that seems certain to be read — and often, […]
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Misconceptions & an attack on collective bargaining
December 16, 2020
(First published on Fin24) A common misconception, encouraged by media reports and rating agency comments, is that South Africa’s civil service is bloated and has continued to grow while the private sector has shed jobs. But official figures reveal that there are now 32,077 fewer employees on the government payroll than there were seven years […]
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Reflections of a Wayward Boy (12)
December 14, 2020
Published at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-12-13-wayward-boy-stumbling-into-exile-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer-from-dominee-du-toit/ Despite my nervousness, getting into exile over Easter of April, 1965, turned out to be remarkably easy. Less than a week after disappearing from Johannesburg, I was in Salisbury (Harare) in what was then Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). But I was broke and needed a job. Then, within weeks, aided by blind luck […]
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February 15, 2021
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