Rana Plaza was the deadliest factory disaster in history. On April 23 last year a shoddily built eight-storey building in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, collapsed.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 15 December 2014
Nearly 17 years ago, sitting behind a slightly battered desk in Cape Town’s Salt River, Myrtle Witbooi told me that the dream of domestic workers being “treated like other workers” would not die. “We want a living wage and proper hours. It is a dream…but we will get there,” said the woman who, in Cape Town in 1965, convened the first organisational meeting of domestic workers.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 8 December 2014
Politically, the biggest potential loser in the ongoing and increasingly bitter fracas within Cosatu and its affiliates is the smallest member of the ANC-led tripartite alliance, the South African Communist Party (SACP). That party’s Medium Term Vision (MTV), described in some party documents as a “ten-year plan” looks close to being in tatters.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 30 November 2014
Learning from the mistakes of others, and being aware of the basis of those mistakes, helps us not to repeat the same errors. This is something to which those individuals, groups and unions now agitating to move South Africa onto a new political trajectory via a trade union supported political party would do well to pay heed.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 24 November 2014
It is no exaggeration to say that South Africa is in the midst of the most important political development since 1994.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 17 November 2014
The very public scrap between former trade union leaders John Copelyn and Marcel Golding, both now billionaire business people, has raised a crucial question for the labour movement: the role of union investment companies.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 12 November 2014
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I tender this classic apology on behalf of many of my fellow journalists who have recently misled the public about the situation regarding the National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) and the Cosatu federation.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 3 November 2014
The strike bound South African Post Office (Sapo) has been badly damaged. And not by greedy workers and belligerent unions, but by mismanagement, corruption and a total lack of planning and foresight. The strike in its eleventh week is not a cause, but a symptom of the malaise.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 27 October 2014
The question of class came to the fore this week with that arch free marketeer Ann Bernstein and the Centre for Democracy and Enterprise (CDE) hailing the potential growth of a global middle class, among them teachers. At the same time, the Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) concluded its conference, declaring teachers to be “revolutionary professionals, agents of change...in pursuit of socialism”.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 13 October 2014
Once again we are having calls from a number of trade unions for the private sector to exercise “social responsibility” in order to help build “a developmental state”. It is a far cry from 1996 when the combined labour movement presented alternative economic policy proposals.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 6 October 2014
Wednesday was a public holiday: Heritage Day. And carnivore commercialism seems largely to have claimed it. For many — if not most — South Africans who could afford it, this was a day to indulge in and enjoy chisa nyama, the ubiquitous braai.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 29 September 2014
Is South Africa on the brink of a clash between the egalitarian concepts embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the demands to retain undemocratic, feudal and colonial hangovers of the past? If so, it may be Swaziland that will provide the catalyst.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 22 September 2014
Former South African intelligence services minister and Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veteran Ronnie Kasrils has launched a scathing attack on deputy defence minister Kebby Maphatsoe.
Terry Bell
News | 16 September 2014
Deputy defence minister Kebby Maphatsoe this week withdrew his claim that public protector Thuli Madonsela was a “CIA spy” and apologised for the statement. But the issue continues to reverberate throughout the body politic.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 15 September 2014
Our justly praised Constitution and the institutions it created have taken something of a verbal battering over the past week and more — and often for the wrong reasons. In the process, the office of the public protector has become something of a surrogate battleground for the opposing factions in Cosatu.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 8 September 2014
The opening salvoes have again been fired in another round in the war about a national minimum wage. And on both sides there are accusations of the selective choice of research to bolster arguments.
Terry Bell
Opinion | 1 September 2014