SAFTU pays tribute to journalist Terry Bell – champion of workers and justice

SAFTU honours the life and legacy of veteran journalist Terry Bell, whose fearless reporting and activism shaped struggles for justice, workers’ rights, and socialism.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) mourns the passing of veteran journalist, anti-apartheid activist, and lifelong revolutionary, Comrade Terry Bell, who died at the age of 84 on Wednesday morning, March 25, while on a trip with his family to the Eastern Cape.

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, comrades, and the broader community of workers, activists, and progressive intellectuals across the world who have been shaped by his life, his pen, and his unwavering commitment to justice.

Terry Bell was not simply a journalist. He was a combatant in the struggle for truth, a revolutionary intellectual, and a tireless advocate for the working class. His life stands as a living archive of resistance, from the underground struggles against apartheid, to exile, to the unfinished battles against inequality, imperialism, and exploitation in post-apartheid South Africa and globally.

From his early days helping to build the non-racial South African Journalists’ Union, to editing the clandestine publication Combat, Bell placed his life on the line in the fight against apartheid repression. His detention under the notorious 90-day law in 1964 and subsequent exile did not silence him – it sharpened his resolve.

In Zambia, in the United Kingdom, and later in New Zealand, he continued to organise, write, and mobilise. In London, he contributed to Anti-Apartheid News and the Daily Worker, embedding himself in the global movement against apartheid and capitalism. In Tanzania, alongside his partner, Barbara, he helped build the Somafco school system and drafted the ANC’s first primary school curriculum. This act demonstrated his belief that education itself is a site of struggle.

Importantly, Terry Bell was a revolutionary who refused unquestioning loyalty. When confronted with abuses within the liberation movement, he chose principle over comfort, resigning from positions rather than compromising his values. This moral courage defined his life.

Upon his return to South Africa in 1991, he refused the temptations of political office or proximity to power. Instead, he remained rooted among workers and the oppressed, advancing a clear and uncompromising position:

‘Vote ANC, but build a socialist alternative.’

This position resonates deeply with SAFTU’s own understanding that the liberation of the working class cannot be outsourced to political elites, but must be built through independent organisation, struggle, and socialist transformation.

As a journalist, Terry Bell was fearless. His columns in Business Report, Fin24, City Press, and numerous other platforms were marked by clarity, courage, and class consciousness. He wrote not for comfort, but to provoke thought, expose injustice, and sharpen struggle.

Even in his final years, his pen remained sharp. He warned of the dangers of nationalism degenerating into authoritarianism and fascism. He stood firmly against imperialism and the genocide unfolding in Palestine, refusing to be silenced, even when banned from major platforms. He remained, to the very end, an internationalist who understood that the struggle of the South African working class is inseparable from the struggles of oppressed peoples everywhere.

In his New Year’s message at the beginning of 2026, he called for:

‘a future that could be free of the lies and deceits of national leaders, the bloodshed and horrors of armed conflict and the disastrous pursuit of profit before people… a true global democracy.’

This was not just a wish; it was a call to action.

Comrade Terry Bell also engaged deeply with SAFTU and its leadership. In his characteristic humility and comradeship, he addressed us as equals in struggle – Qabane. In one of his last reflections, he returned to a warning that remains profoundly relevant: that mass unemployment, inequality, and social despair are a powder keg, and that when it explodes, it is the working class that suffers the most, both in the immediate chaos and in the generational scars that follow.

He was correct then, and he remains correct today.

South Africa continues to sit on that tinderbox of mass unemployment, deepening poverty, collapsing public services, and rising inequality. The eruptions we have witnessed are not accidents; they are the inevitable consequences of a system that places profit before people.

Terry Bell not only diagnosed these crises, but he demanded that we confront them honestly and forge a new path forward rooted in democracy, socialism, and working-class power.

SAFTU commits to honouring his legacy not through words alone, but through struggle:
· By intensifying the fight against austerity and neoliberalism
· By defending workers against exploitation, retrenchments, and precarious work
· By building unity between workers, the unemployed, and communities
· By strengthening international solidarity against imperialism and oppression
· By advancing the struggle for a socialist alternative

Terry Bell’s life teaches us that journalism must serve the people, that intellectual work must be anchored in struggle, and that neutrality in the face of injustice is complicity.