T.O. 95: Asia Antiwar Appeal – Paris Rally (2) – Ukraine-Russia, Attacks on Workers – Mozambique – Volkov (2)

ASIA ANTIWAR APPEAL

Workers, Youth and Peoples Do Not Want War.

No to escalation of the war!

A call from labor activists in the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, China (HK and Mainland), Korea and Australia

(reprinted from the IWC Newsletter No. 134)

With each passing week the people of the China Sea region see the clouds gathering.

In Europe, the war in Ukraine, with its trail of destruction and horror, is entering its second year. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died.

This is only the beginning:

“The war in Ukraine is only a warm-up”. “Great crisis is coming” in the confrontation with China (Adm. Charles A. Richard, US Strategic Command (Straton), November 2022)

Things are accelerating!

27 January: US Air Force Gen. Michael Minihan: “My instinct is that we will be fighting in 2025” against China.

14 February: War “can last for many, many years” says NATO Secretary General.

The peoples are always the victims of bloody conflicts initiated by the powerful. We don’t know what the developments will be in the weeks and months to come. But a mechanism is underway. Military maneuvers are intensifying. The provocations are increasing. It is dangerous.

⦁ The Philippine government has just signed an agreement allowing US soldiers access to four additional bases “in strategic areas of the country”. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcomes the fact that this will give the US access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines.

⦁ In Japan, military spending will double between 2023 and 2027 to 43 trillion yen (US$316 billion). For the first time, the country is openly acquiring offensive weapons.

⦁ In Australia, a budget of $575 billion over a decade will be spent on strengthening the military.

⦁ In South Korea, during his visit, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced an increase in joint air maneuvers. They have just taken place in the Yellow Sea with a US strategic bomber and stealth fighters. The government has threatened the trade unions. President Yoon Suk Yeo, who is preparing a reform against the labour code, says: “If the trade unions that oppose the South Korea-US military exercises are normalized, our capital market will develop and the value of companies will automatically increase.“

In all our countries, the march to war is being combined with violent attacks on workers’ rights, on trade unions.

At any moment our region could be tipped over into war.

Its scale would be catastrophic. In the first place, for the Chinese people who are not responsible for this situation. And beyond that for all the peoples of the region, and of the world.

We make this call from activists and workers in China (From Mainland China and Hong Kong) our own:

“Whatever the pretext, a war against China will be a war against our people. It would mean a new – and unfortunately decisive – step towards a third world war. Chinese youth and workers do not want war, as we are sure the American, European and Japanese workers do not want war. They want peace. The workers of the whole world are not our enemies. They are our allies in the struggle we are waging to be able to organize freely, to build our independent organizations. The Chinese workers, the Chinese people, are opposed to war.

“They long for peace. As Chinese workers, we are also concerned about the rising tensions around the Taiwan issue and that these tensions could lead to a direct military confrontation between the Western world and China. The Chinese people in mainland China, as well as those in Hong Kong do not regard their brothers and sisters in Taiwan as enemies and do not want a confrontation with them. It is up to the Chinese people, including all their components, and to them only, to decide on their future. That means that we are strongly opposed to any intervention whether on the economic, political or military ground on the part of foreign powers.

“Brothers and sisters all over the world, urge peaceful means to resolve conflicts. Wars condemn workers and peoples to homelessness, joblessness and landlessness. The people have the capacity to take matters into their own hands without bureaucratic tutelage. You should know that through strikes and demonstrations the workers of our country have not given up – despite the repression – to fight for their rights. In our country, as in the whole world, it is the mobilization of the working people – freely organized – that can oppose the march to war. The fight against war independent of all governments calls for the independence of the labor movement.”

The peoples and workers of the whole world are against war. They know that it means more and more oppression and exploitation.

Let us unite against war and exploitation to impose peace and preserve the future of humanity.

Initial signers:

China : Workers Tribune On China
Phillipines: Partido Manggagawa
South Korea: Jeongmin Choi, Yong Seok Lee, Seraphina Cha MK

Endorsement Coupon

I endorse this appeal.

“Workers, youth and peoples do not want war. No to the war escalation!”

In my personal capacity o On behalf of my organisation o

Name, Forename:

Address:

City/Country:

Phone:

E-mail :

Signature :

Return coupon to: workerstribuneagainstwar@protonmail.com

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Expanded Excerpts from Closing Speech by Daniel Gluckstein to the June 4 European Antiwar Rally in Paris

All of us here consider that the common interests of the workers and young people of our respective countries, and indeed of all countries and continents, necessitates the joint struggle against war and exploitation. And this is all the more important as we meet at a time when all peoples risk being drawn further into the war.

Let’s be clear: The people of this country [France] do not want war. They are being drawn into war, like all peoples, but they do not want war.

We’re being dragged into war by this hypocrite Biden, who tells us, “We sent very sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, but they promised us they weren’t going to use it on Russian territory.”

 How much more outrageous can you get?

For his part, Macron, less hypocritical, declared a fortnight ago that he is against a ceasefire. For Macron and his lot, the war must not be frozen, it must continue. So, comrades, this is a situation where danger is closing in.

People ask: But Putin is carrying out massacres and barbaric policies. Can we keep quiet? No. Of course we must condemn them. And as the Russian comrade before me explained so well, in order for these policies to be combatted, those in Russia who defend the interests of peace, the interests of workers, the interests of youth, must have the courage to denounce these policies, and to take action accordingly.

Of course, we must condemn – but not alongside just anyone, and not under just any circumstances.

Take the heads of State of the world’s richest capitalist countries. They just gathered in Hiroshima. There’s something indecent about President Biden’s presence there.

How can we forget the 250,000 dead in Hiroshima? The U.S. administration decided to drop the bomb even though it had no military justification, but they needed to terrorize the Japanese people. Just like when the bombs fell on Dresden at the end of World War II: They needed to terrorize the German proletariat.

When U.S. imperialism condemns Putin’s crimes, workers the world over have every right to say to them: “Not alongside you! Not alongside the governments responsible for the Hiroshima massacres. Not alongside you, the men responsible for the millions of deaths in Vietnam, for the use of napalm. Not alongside you, who are responsible for all imperialist wars!”

This is true of Macron as well as Biden. When he condemns Putin’s crimes, how can we fail to remember that the Fifth Republic he presides over was born of a military coup in 1958 fomented by the colonialist-backed French army in Algeria?

How can we fail to remember that this Fifth Republic was born in the blood and torture of the Algerian people fighting for their freedom? Those who are the heirs of this Fifth Republic have no lessons in civilization to give to anyone!

How can we fail to recall the massacres of Sétif and Guelma in Algeria on May 8, 1945? By massacring tens of thousands of Algerians, the colonial power meant that the Algerian people had nothing to celebrate in the aftermath of the victory over Nazism. How can we forget the massacres during the anti-colonial uprising in Madagascar?

How can we forget the shameless lie fabricated jointly by the heads of state of the United States, France and Great Britain, who invented Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify the destruction of Iraq, when it had been proven by their own administrations’ reports that these weapons of mass destruction had never existed.

(No to the compulsory military service for teenagers!)

So no, Macron, no, Biden, and all the others: “Not with you, Not that, No lessons in morality, No lessons in civilization! Barbarism is your system and your administrations!” …

Just as we demand the withdrawal of all troops from Ukraine, starting with French troops – just as we say immediate ceasefire, we must call for the cancellation of the French debt.

The POID fights for bread, social justice and democracy, which raises the question: Who will impose the necessary break with the current regime?

Indeed, there is an urgent need to replace this government, which governs only for the minority of exploiters, which governs only for war, which governs only for the bankers… it is urgent to oust this government and replace it with a government at the service of the working-class majority.

For more than four months now, millions and millions of workers and young people have been on strike, demonstrating, and at a certain stage of this mobilization they have come up against the roadblock put up by the leaders of the unions and political parties who speak in their name and who have made it clear that beyond this limit [of rotating and one-day strikes], we can’t go any further.

You can call for days of action, you can call for big one-day strikes, but there’s a limit beyond which you can’t go. And that limit is the call for a general strike. It’s a limit that aims to preserve not just the Macron government, but the Fifth Republic.

But we must be aware, comrades, that the movement towards a general strike has not ended. It will arise again, perhaps not on the pensions issue, but in other forms.

Millions and millions of workers and young people have taken a certain path. Comrades Benjamin, Djamila and Antoine have given an illustration, and we could give many others: Millions of workers have begun to learn or re-learn how they can and must take their affairs into their own hands.

And taking matters into our own hands means starting to organize ourselves to define our demands, our means of action, and our means of organization.

We have to make it clear that if the leaders of the organizations refuse to assume their responsibilities, if they shirk their responsibilities, then a new generation of leaders will have to emerge from below, from the workplaces, from the factories, from the services, from the hospitals, from the schools, from the post offices. All of them will take into their own hands the organization of the struggle to meet the demands of the working-class majority. All of them will have to be accountable to those who they represent.

This is the perspective of workers’ democracy.

The people must be invited to define a new democratic regime – now, not in four years’ time, while respectfully waiting for the presidential election.

Because in four years, this country will be a field of ruins. So, comrade, yes, the fight against war in France is the fight to oust Macron, it’s the fight to oust the government, which is waging war at home and abroad.

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A U.S. Activist’s Report on the June 4 European Antiwar Rally in Paris

[The following report was sent to us by Cliff Conner, renowned author of “People’s History of Science,” “Tragedy of American Science,” and many other books, including one on the role of Marat in the French Revolution. Conner was an active organizer of the Vietnam antiwar movement in the 1960s and was a co-editor of the SWP’s magazine: the International Socialist Review.]

Dear editor,

Thank you for your extensive report on the June 4 antiwar rally in Paris hosted by the Democratic Independent Workers Party (POID). [For a report on the rally, with brief excerpts from its 13 speakers, go to www.socialistorganizer.org, and click T.O. Issue 93.]

I attended the rally and would like to share some of my thoughts and reactions. 

Comrade Soazig drove us across Paris to the rally site in the 12th arrondissement, and we arrived in plenty of time.  I was greeted by Jean-Pierre Barrois, who led me through the crowd and into the rally site, and sat me down in the front row, right in front of the speaker’s podium. 

A young fellow sitting next to me asked if I was going to speak at the rally. That startled me, because the thought hadn’t occurred to me. Anyway, I managed to respond, “J’espère que non!”  [I hope not.] And of course, that wasn’t part of the plan.

As for the political content of the rally, I assumed that it wouldn’t simply be an abstract appeal for pacifism, and would almost surely be focused on the conflict in Ukraine, because that has been a hotly contested issue among Marxist tendencies.  And of course, that was the focus (in conjunction with Dehors [Out With] Macron!).

I was concerned at first because one of the speakers called for ending “the war” by negotiations.  As you remember, during the Vietnam war, our position was that the victims of aggression were 100% justified in participating in negotiations with the aggressors, but the international solidarity movement should not concede that the aggressors had any right to demand concessions from their victims. As the rally continued, however, Ukraine was clearly specified as the victim of aggression, and I never heard another allusion to negotiations. 

Most reassuring was Daniel Gluckstein’s “keynote” finale, which I found to be very much in harmony with my thoughts about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (I’m not arrogantly suggesting that a French political party’s ideology or political line should necessarily harmonize with my own, but given the circumstances, I’m glad that was the case.)

As for the mood of the rally, it was all upbeat and militant. After it ended, before heading home, several of the comrades wanted to go to a local pub for a drink, and they took me along.  I inquired whether the comrades felt the rally had been a success, and they enthusiastically said it had been. 

Daniel Gluckstein had mentioned in his talk that the turnout was about 1,800.  I can’t remember a gathering like this one in the United States of as many as 180 people, so as you can imagine, it was quite impressive to me.

Also, before leaving the hall, I had an opportunity to introduce myself to Daniel Gluckstein, and he greeted me warmly. I was intending to tell him that I had previously met members of his family, but he beat me to it by recalling that his daughter had stayed with us in New York.  There were a lot of people who were trying to get his attention, so I said I hoped we would have another time to talk, and he said he did, too.

So the bottom line is that I appreciate the effort made for me to attend the rally. And a first-row seat, no less!  Most of all, I hope it translates into actual political success, with the Dehors Macron! demand becoming reality.

In solidarity,

Cliff Conner

New York, NY

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Russia and Ukraine: On Both Sides of the Battle Lines, It’s a War on the Workers!

Russian socialist activist Andrei Rudoi has compiled material showing how the Putin and Zelensky regimes have used the war to redouble their strikes against workers.

Russia: The 2004 Reform of the Labor Code Was Not Enough

“It’s war, so let’s unite in the face of the enemy. Let’s forget our quarrels. Times are hard, but we must accept it. When our brave soldiers return home victorious, life will be more beautiful!”

If you’re a citizen of Russia or Ukraine, you can’t have escaped these speeches from our governments.

But behind the scenes, both Putin and Zelensky took advantage of the war to impose counter-reforms in the service of the bosses. Tens of millions of workers in Russia and Ukraine are affected. The two warring regimes are united on at least one point: they defend the interests of the bosses against those of the workers.

Since “the main enemy is in our own country,” let’s start with Russia, even if, in terms of anti-worker legislation, it is only just catching up with Ukraine.

Russia, like Ukraine, inherited a Soviet labor law that was advantageous to workers. But since the fall of the USSR, it has been systematically “reformed” to the advantage of employers. Thus, in 2004, Putin’s new Labor Code eliminated any possibility for workers to legally organize strikes worthy of the name. But that wasn’t enough.

March 2023: the Duma invents the “platform worker

So, on March 15, 2023, the State Duma (Russian Parliament) approved the draft “Employment” law, which will come into force on January 1, 2024.

This law introduces the concept of “platform worker,” defined as “someone who works using applications connected to the Internet –  which concerns a very large number of current employees. The aim is to exempt as many workers as possible from the application of the Labor Code.

Russia has already developed a “platform economy”: Yandex, Deliveries, Sberbank structures. In these companies, under pressure from employers, many employees have given up their employment contracts to adopt the status of “self-employed” or “auto-entrepreneur.”

Couriers, cab drivers and many other categories have become “platform workers,” doing exactly what salaried employees used to do. But they are deprived of the guarantees associated with salaried employment, such as an eight-hour workday, a forty-hour week, extra pay for overtime and weekend work, paid vacations, sick leave, social security and pensions. All this will be determined by each platform.

Payment of unemployment benefit conditional on an “individual plan”

The law also aims “to help the unemployed, but also to prevent unemployment” (Tass, December 13, 2022), dared to declare Andrei Issaev, the ex-anarcho-syndicalist turned Putin deputy.

In reality, the law stipulates that unemployment benefits will only be paid once the unemployed person has completed an “individual plan.” Which plan? We’ll soon find out. We can already imagine periods of free or low-paid work that you won’t be able to refuse on pain of being struck off your unemployment benefit entitlement [we can’t help thinking of Macron’s “RSA reform” – translator’s note].

All this, of course, in the name of “defending the homeland”, etc. The official unions have legitimized this law. And this is just the beginning: an employers’ union now believes that a six-day week should be introduced, and has sent a proposal to this effect to the Ministry of Labor.

Ukraine: The seven anti-social laws of summer 2022

And what about Ukraine? Ukraine was a few steps ahead of Russia when it came to anti-worker attacks. The package of anti-social laws, prepared long before the war, shortly after Zelensky’s accession to the throne, had provoked massive protests from the trade unions in 2020, preventing the adoption of a counter-labor reform.

In 2021, at least seven anti-worker and anti-union bills were put forward in Parliament, even though they were considered to be contrary to International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions.

One example is bill no. 5371, submitted in the Supreme Rada (Parliament) in 2021. But at the time, the Zelensky government, fearing a social explosion, postponed it. It was finally adopted on April 13, 2022, in the midst of war, when almost a quarter of Ukrainians had had to leave their country and the rest had other concerns.

73.1% of employees without a collective agreement

Law no. 5371 decrees that in small and medium-sized companies with fewer than 250 employees, all working conditions will no longer be determined by law, but by an individual contract signed by each employee, in which the employer will determine the amount of work for each employee and may include any grounds for dismissal other than those set out in the Labor Code.

It is now possible for the employer to pay wages once a month instead of twice, and wage levels are no longer set by the collective agreement.

“This bill threatens the majority of workers, as 73.1% of the active population work in small and medium-sized enterprises. Given the widespread practice of ‘dividing’ large companies into a number of small and medium-sized enterprises, this regime will end up applying to large companies too,” explained Mikhailo Volynets, president of the Independent Miners’ Union of Ukraine at the time.

Oleksandr Ryabko, president of the Metalworkers’ Union, points out that this “offers a significant advantage to the employer, who will be able to set different working hours, breaks and vacations, as well as different wages for employees doing the same work”.

When the “defenders of the fatherland” return from the front to their factories…

How many pathos-filled speeches has Zelensky made about the “glorious defenders of the fatherland against foreign invasion”? But when the glorious defenders return from the front to their factories and construction sites, they’ll be subjected to the worst kind of overexploitation: longer working hours, no more social security and the constant threat of being told, “By the way, you’re fired!”

Anton Gorb, leader of the Ukrainian Postal Workers’ Union, says: “At the Post Office, we had a good collective-bargaining agreement. But today, employers have turned their backs on social dialogue. We thought it was because of the war, but it turns out they were just waiting for this law to be passed.”

The management of the Ukrainian Post Office was quick to cancel 30 clauses of the collective agreement (working conditions, trade union rights, provision of work clothes, occupational health, regulation of working hours, etc.).

And that’s not all. In the summer of 2022, Law no. 7251 on the “optimization of labor relations” was also passed. It applies to employees of large companies… who were hoping to escape Law no. 5371. It imposes an additional ground for dismissal: if, as a result of military action, the employer’s “production, organization, technical installations, means of production or goods” have been destroyed, the employer may be dismissed without restriction!

“Is it worth sacrificing our lives for these people?

“Nothing unites Russia and Ukraine more than the oligarchic bourgeois nature of their regimes, which solve their problems on the backs of the workers. Soldiers on both sides of the front are asking: “Is it worth sacrificing our lives for these people?”

We’re slipping back into the conditions of 19th-century capitalism, with the over-exploitation of a servile workforce. We’ve seen how French workers – certainly not always successfully, but with determination and organization – are defending themselves against their government’s anti-social attacks.

But what about us? Even if the war has dug trenches between us, it shows the extent to which workers in Russia and Ukraine are facing the same problems,” concludes Andrei Roudoï.

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FRANCE

What Is the Purpose of the Fifth Republic?

The Constitution Put to the Test, Five Months of Class Struggle

A Few Lessons

Two lessons can be drawn from these past five months.

First, these months have revealed the authoritarian nature of the Fifth Republic: It endows a single man, the President of the Republic, with virtually absolute powers [by making use of Article 49-3 of the Constitution]. As soon as the capitalists have a demand, one way or another, the President has the means to push it through. That’s what the Constitution is for.

Second, all parliamentary maneuvers and the strongest protests from the “left” have all been within the framework of respect for the institutions of the Fifth Republic: motions of censure, appeals to Macron, appeals to the Constitutional Council, and so on.

It’s worth noting that at no time did a leader of the Socialist Party (PS), French Communist Party (PCF) or France Unbowed (LFI, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon) question Macron’s legitimacy. At every stage, on the contrary, they chose to defer to him, calling on him to “hear” more points of view, to “listen to the country.”

Mélenchon, for example, called on the President of the Republic to ensure “a democratic exit.” But Macron had just used the 49-3 to shut the door on any democratic solution.

At a time when millions of strikers were expressing their determination to get the government to back down (posing the need for a call for a general strike by the trade union confederations), wasn’t the best help that the leaders of the “left” could have given them to declare that the Fifth Republic must be dismantled?

The question is still relevant today.

These institutions offer no opportunity for social progress or democracy. Only a policy of rupture with these institutions, for the Constituent Assembly, to sweep away the Fifth Republic and replace it with a government of the working-class majority, will make this possible.

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France: Fighting Reaction and Obscurantism Is a Workers’ Struggle

(reprinted from La Tribune des Travailleurs / Workers Tribune)

Dear comrades,

In addition to the comprehensive but necessarily concise appeal adopted by the 6th Congress of the POID, I’d like to return to a question that is an integral part of our program and our fight for democracy.

Over the last few months in particular, La Tribune des travailleurs / Workers Tribune has rightly reported and condemned the increasingly frequent attacks perpetrated by groups of fascist thugs against artists, political offices, associations, reception centers for immigrants, and elected representatives.

The backdrop to these street demonstrations and attacks is the racist onslaught against immigrants [mainly from Northern Africa and the Middle East – tr. note] and against Jews ­ as it was in the past – and perhaps still is, alas.

These disturbing facts can only be encouraged by [Interior Minister Gérard] Darmanin’s willingness to accuse Marine Le Pen of laxity, Le Pen’s ostensible collaboration with her friends in the GUD (Union Defense Group), Macron’s castigation of Borne for the FN-RN’s Petainist origins, and so on.

On this nauseating terrain, a fundamentalist, obscurantist current is trying to take its place as an active force. In the region where I live and am a local councillor an attempt is being made to set up a Christian community village, promote anti-immigrant expeditions by the Civitas group, and establish a vast school center run by a sect (FSSPX*) – a sect which hosted an anti-human rights conference on its premises in Isère. All are seeing the light of day.

These facts, I believe, fully highlight this important aspect of our program, a legacy of the work of the Paris Commune and the progressive, socialist struggle of Jean Jaurès: the defense and full restoration of the 1905 law separating Church and State. – Patrick Etesse

Endnote

* The FSSPX is the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.

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Appeal to all Activists to

Demand that the Profit-driven war in Mozambique is an Imperialist war that must END IMMEDIATELY! Put People before profit!

(reprinted from IWC Newsletter No. 134)

Since the 5 October 2017 reports of clashes between the Mozambique army and Al Shabab in Cabo Delgado in what was characterized as one of the deadliest clashes in the SADC (1) region since the Mozambique civil war that took place from 1977 to 1992, has caused massive migration of Mozambique working class into other regions.

The perpetrators of this war are the multinational companies who have captured the Mozambican government. Soon after the discovery of natural gas in the province, it has been explored by various European countries in an effort to exploit and make profits even if it is at an expense of the Mozambique working majority’s lives.

Transnational corporations such as France’s Total Energies SE, the US’ Exxon Mobil, and Italy’s ENI stand to profit in the conflict that has cost the lives of many people in Mozambique and young soldiers deployed from other countries. These massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects by these corporations hold a potential value of $ 120 billion – according to Standard Bank Mozambique – with Total Energies and Exxon Mobil in control of the most lucrative concessions.

The multi nationals operating mining, construction and exploration have done nothing in terms of creating jobs and there is no development for the people in the area. Today the province is infested with criminals and rebels wreaking havoc in the lives of the poor. Rebel groups have turned the province into a battle zone that has displaced and dismantled families of the poor Mozambican people.

All Southern African Development Countries – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana Tanzania and Lesotho – have played roles in this war by sending troops and providing other support in perpetuating the war.

They are accompanied by other African countries such as Rwanda and imperialist powers: the USA (through US Africa Command), France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Japan and the European Union.

All countries involved have the same interests. Those profit interests are at the expense of the poor Black working class majority in Mozambique especially at Cabo Delgado.

It is up to the people of Mozambique to decide!

We, the undersigned activists of working-class, democratic, anti-imperialist organisations of the SADC countries and the world express our solidarity with the people of Mozambique and hereby demand the immediate:

· Withdrawal of all the foreign troops in Mozambique Cabo Delgado province!

· End to this imperialist profit driven war!

· Withdrawal of Transnational (Total Energies, Exxon Mobil, ENI, etc.): Hands off Mozambique’s natural resources!

· Nationalisation of Mozambique Energy Industry in the hands of Mozambican Working class!

· End to abductions and attacks on civilians which are mainly women and children in Cabo Delgado province!

(1) Southern African Development Community

Endorsers:

AZANIA/SOUTH AFRICA:
Mandla Phangwa (Azanian Section of Fourth International-ASFI), Ashraf Jooma (ASFI), Shaheen Khan (Azania-Potch for Palestine), Scelo Mthembu (ASFI), Azikiwe Plato (ASFI), Lebohang Phanyeko (Trade Unionist SAFTU), Shaheed Mohamed (Activist-Azania), Bofelo Mphutlane (Activist-Azania), Christopher Peter (Activist-Azania), Tatum Phangwa (ASFI), Nicholas Tucker (Activist-Azania), Mbali Ngwenda (Activist-Azania), Shoez Nsibande (Friends Of Cuba Society – SA(Azania)), Pollen Mafulako (Azania-SRWP), Unathi Vimbani (Azania-Teacher), Frank Julie (Azania-Western Cape – Author & activist), Sqathulo Diyate (Azania–Activist), Mathew Lungameni, Mncedisi Dyasso (Azania-SRWP), Vuyo Lufele (Azania-Activist), Mqapheli Lufele (Azania-Activist), Prof. Vuyo Peach (Black Forum South Africa), Johan Viljoen (Executive Director-Denis Hurley Peace Institute), Na’eem Jeenah (Executive Director–Afro-Middle East Centre)

BOTSWANA:
Thambona Jopi (BOPEWU – Botswana)

MALAWI:
Madalitso Njolomole (SecGen Malawi Congress of Trade Unions –MCTU)

NAMIBIA :
Ian Liebenberg (Author & Professor University of Namibia), Rinaani Musutua (Economic & Social Justice Trust–Namibia), Martin Lukato Lukato (National Democratic Party (NDP) President – Namibia)

SWAZILAND:
Mduduzi C Gina (Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA)

ZIMBABWE:
Chuma Samson (Zimbabwe), Mafa Kwanisai Mafa (OCRFI Zimbabwe Section (Chairman)), Kudakwashe Shambare (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Tafirenyika Shoko (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Mkondo Tungamirayi (Pan African Students Society-Zimbabwe), Nathan Ndlovu (Pan African Students Society-Zimbabwe), Takudzwanashe Taringa (Pan African Students Society-Zimbabwe), Tinashe T Maenzanise (Pan African Students Society), Albert Chimhofu (Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union), Tipei Loratta Dube (Zimbabwe Palestine Solidarity Council), Ntandoyenkosi Ayanda Ndhlovu (Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union), Dr Shadreck Matindike (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Pianos Mugomba (Zimbabwe Congress of Student Union), Victor Maride, ZANU PF, Caleb Kuranga (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Fortune Madondo (Zimbabwe Youth Forum), Tapiwanashe Chikwinho (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Runesu Gumbo (Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union), Memory Rudo Mupandawana (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan Africa Socialists), Isabel Shumba (Zimbabwe Movement of Pan African Socialists), Tanaka Chipere, (Pan African Students Society, Zimbabwe), Lycias Muchatiza (Vice Chairperson Visionary Cadres Association of Zimbabwe-VICAZ)

Endorsement coupon

I hereby endorse the above appeal and campaign to demand an end to the war in Mozambique. Name

Organisation/Personal Country
Contact details

Please return endorsement coupon to:
blackrepublic1976@gmail.com / ashrafjooma@gmail.com / phangwamandlenkosi@gmail.com

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We Salute the Memory of Esteban Volkov

Having met Esteban Volkov on several occasions, I add my name to the tribute paid to him by our comrade Alan Benjamin.

Esteban Volkov was “one of us” in the broad sense of being a supporter of Marxism, faithful to the method and teaching of Leon Trotsky. At the same time, as he points out in the 2012 interview, his concern for unity has always led him to shy away from discussion of the political differences between currents claiming to be Trotskyist.

With the positions he has taken, Esteban Volkov has made his contribution to the continuity of the struggle for the Fourth International, and to the transmission of this heritage to the younger generations.

The members of the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI), who in France are regrouped in the Internationalist Communist Tendency (TCI), salute his memory.

— Daniel Gluckstein