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News & Views by Terry Bell
Arrest, detention & catharsis
Reflections of a Wayward Boy 11 (Also available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-11-23-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-gerald-ludi-and-the-casual-brutality-of-the-security-police/) Anyone who has been arrested in a midnight raid, held in solitary confinement, threatened with dire consequences and interrogated, probably emerges at least slightly unhinged. Especially when it becomes obvious that a journalist colleague was a police spy. That certainly applied in my case, but […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
The virus is not to blame
November 15, 2020
(First published in City Press and on Fin24) 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 done to millions of […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
The challenge of real democracy
November 14, 2020
(Available online at: https://www.news24.com/fin24/opinion/inside-labour-a-wake-up-call-for-democracy-20201113) There are two crucial lessons to be learned from the political and electoral shambles in the United States: the first about what democracy really means and, the second, why nationalism in all its forms is a serious threat to all. Democracy is clearly defined in the opening line of an old […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Put the ‘devastating’ blame where it belongs
October 31, 2020
First produced in City Press, South Africa 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 done to millions of mainly […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Reflections of a wayward boy 10
October 31, 2020
Also available on: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-10-29-reflections-of-a-wayward-boy-how-i-tumbled-a-notorious-apartheid-police-spy/ When the security branch (SB) swooped in July 3,1964, no newspaper had a picture of me. I had seen to that as a precaution should I ever be on the run. Yet, as I soon discovered, the police had veritable photo albums of everyone. However, the Rand Daily Mail did have […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
SA Govt’s historic millstone
October 31, 2020
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 […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
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 […]
Posted in: Autobiographical
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 […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
November 25, 2020
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