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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All posts tagged under »mining«
Unemployment, malnutrition & decolonisation
Local production — poultry and sugar being classic examples — is being crippled by unfair competition. This means not only more job losses and suffering; in the long term it could mean the effective takeover of SA Inc, something the decolonisation lobby would do well to consider.
Criminalising desperate mine workers
September 25, 2016
Driven by poverty to artisanal mining, enterprising workers are criminalised for being entrepreneurial. At the same time, the SA government, perhaps with good intentions, seems likely to create a disaster with changes to compensation coverage for miners.
Marikana, mining and idustrial peace
August 21, 2016
The circumstances surrounding the deaths at Marikana four years ago should provide a bloody and tragic lesson about the reality of South Africa’s mineral wealth. Marikana should become a reminder of a brutal industrial history and a symbol for the struggle to improve the lives of workers, everywhere.
Mining, job losses & the system
August 15, 2015
Large scale redundancies in the South African mining sector, running to tens of thousands of jobs, are probably inevitable. But only because of the system in which we have to operate. Even in the gold sector, there will be mines and shafts that remain profitable without job losses, but each shaft and each mine will […]
Who is doing what — and whom — at Amplats?
May 13, 2013
Did the management of Anglo Platinum (Amplats) and the government do a deal behind closed doors regarding retrenchments and shaft closures? Amid a swirl of rumour and innuendo and in an atmosphere of considerable distrust, this is an allegation heard across the union divide.
Groping towards the future
February 14, 2013
In stygian depths 4km and more below the surface of the earth gold continues to be harvested, but by fewer miners and with the aid of more — and increasingly efficient — mechanisation. The primary unemployment problem is not a question of skills or the lack of them: it is just that there are fewer and fewer jobs and more and more people wanting — and needing — work.
A wake-up call SA will ignore at its peril
September 5, 2012
What happened at Marikana should not be seen in isolation. It is merely the most tragic of many unrest incidents around South Africa, but it is a wake-up cll the country will ignore at its peril
Sorting fact from fiction at Marikana
August 23, 2012
Inflammatory propaganda, opportunistic interventions and a narrow, finger pointing focus engaged in by everyone from opposition politicians and government ministers to mine management and some campaigning groups, has added to the tension following the bloodshed at Lonmin's Marikana mine. It is high time to sort out some facts from often self-serving propaganda.
Terry Bell Writes 
August 13, 2018
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