Terry Bel

Terry Bel is a well-known South African labour economist. He was recruited in 1961 into the then recently banned African National Congress (ANC). He subsequently joined the Congress of Democrats (COD). Bell’s journalistic career in the 1960s in South Africa spanned the Amalgamated Press (Germiston Advocate, Benoni City Times, Boksburg Advertiser), Johannesburg Star, Rand Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Sunday Express. He was the treasurer of the short-lived non-racial South African Journalists’ Union (SAJU). He was also a political activist.
In London he joined the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and studied, with other exiles, for a diploma in international affairs through University College. In 1966 the apartheid government imposed banning orders on Bell and a fellow exiled journalist, Geoff Lamb, ensuring that nothing they wrote or said could be published in South Arica. Bell’s ban stayed in place until February1990.