27.03.2026
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Late Terry Bell remembered for principled life

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  • SA author, Terry Bell.

The late veteran labour journalist, analyst and organiser, Terry Bell, is being remembered as a principled man who worked to bring unions closer to workers and their struggles. Bell died on Wednesday, 25 March 2026, at Robert Sobukwe Town, in the Eastern Cape, at the age of 83.

Unionist, educator, journalist, author, analyst and organiser – these are some of the positions Terry Bell held as a true professional. He died suddenly while hiking with his daughter.

“He and Ceiren went up on a mountain, standing on the mountain, looking down, and he said to her, “Barbara would have loved this” and then dropped dead. They tried to revive him, but they couldn’t. The prognosis is that he died of a heart attack up on the mountain,” says Bell’s brother, Neill Gordon Bell.

Bell died nine months after the death of his wife and longtime research partner, Barbara Bell. He was the eldest of three boys in the Bell home in Edenvale on Johannesburg’s East Rand. His brother describes him as a larger-than-life character.

“I want them to remember him number 1 as an activist, as someone who had a great deal of courage, and he was also the most principled man I’ve ever met. He never prostituted his principles, but I remember him as a different person – he loved parties! He was a party person! He loved to entertain, and he loved to talk. He loved to sing, he loved to dance, he tried to take up ballet at the age of 80, because his mother always said to him, ‘I don’t want to be a dancer, and so he and a friend, a 90-year-old woman, went to some ballet classes! And when they tried to do it, they realised they were far too old to do it! But it gives you an indication of his love of good things in life!” says Bell.

The organised labour sector says that Bell leaves an indelible mark.

“I think he was quite passionate about the development of e-platform workers, Uber drivers, call centres, and how the labour laws keep pace with those and how you make sure that workers are still protected. I think often he was far ahead of all the union leaders: you might find that union leaders are focused on the day-to-day issues and I think he was always looking at what’s going to happen and what is happening and then we might not always fully grasp or appreciate or even understand it as well,” says Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (COSATU) Parliamentary Co-ordinator, Matthew Parks.

Bell says details of Terry’s memorial service, to be held in Cape Town, will be communicated in due course.

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