apartheid | Terry Bell Writes

Browsing All posts tagged under »apartheid«

Uncovering the spy known as RS452

February 19, 2011

In 2003 South Africa's director of public prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, was accused of having been a spy — RS452 — for the apartheid state. But the search for RS452 revealed that the spy with that designation was a woman, a lawyer who was once considered a stalwart of the anti-apartheid movement.

An economy riddled with a legacy of contradictions

January 20, 2011

This chapter on the South African economy was written and submitted on August 3, 2007 for a proposed book. It was not published and the chapter was not submitted or published elsewhere. However, given developments to date this text may be of some interest to anyone concerned about economic developments in South Africa.

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 […]

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, […]

The history of an exceptional newspaper

December 8, 2010

The Guardian — The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper. By James Zug (Michigan State University Press/UNISA Press) (First published, May 2009) The Guardian, a polemical newspaper that survived three bannings and subsequent name changes and was once charged, alongside 156 individuals, with treason, is part of the anti-apartheid folk lore of South Africa. […]

South Africa in Africa: The post-apartheid era

December 8, 2010

edited by Adekeye Adebajo, Adebayo Adedeji and Chris Landsberg (University of KZN Press) (First published, June 2008) This excellent volume does not deal with the prospects of a post-Mbeki presidency or with any of the possible fallout from the internecine feuding within the ANC. And this should not matter, for no matter the outcome now […]

Lessons to be learned from Cosatu’s 25 years

November 30, 2010

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) turns 25 in December. But the birthday celebrations around the country will be dampened by heightened tension and some mildly acrimonious outbursts resulting from the content of the government’s New Growth Path (NGP) for the economy and the manner in which it was announced. Like the 1996 […]

In pursuit of ‘Dr Shock’

November 24, 2010

Aubrey Levin, the Johannesburg-born psychiatrist who once claimed to "cure" homosexuals by "aversion therapy" and who was in charge of the notorious Ward 22 for "deviants" in the apartheid state's military hospital in Pretoria, was arrested in March 2010 in Calgary, Canada, charged with the sexual assault of a male patient. It was merely the latest in a history of allegarions dating back across decades.