Dear Comrades,

WE are launching an ambitious Appeal to members and supporters to raise funds for our work in Southern Africa.

It is there that the global re-awakening of the workers’ socialist movement is most concentrated and advanced, and where material resources are most needed if the movement is to make the progress which it can and should make.

The Workers Revolutionary Party in Namibia has won a position where all oppressed and exploited groups in the country turn to it for help in their struggles.

This is possible because of the party’s thoroughgoing understanding of the role the South-West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) government plays as a caretaker for imperialism, based on corrupt rule by a narrow tribal leadership imposed in a deal between the Soviet Union and various imperialist powers in the early 1990s. This regime is both a mockery of democracy and a copy-book example of milking public assets in collusion with imperialist financial interests.

The heart of the WRP(N)’s work is among the country’s miners. The Party’s leadership has worked closely over many years with the TCL miners in their campaign to get back the pensions stolen from them when the company which employed them was liquidated. It has united with the most advanced leaders of the current mine-workers with the aim of making their union (Mineworkers Union of Namibia – MUN) an effective and class-conscious weapon of the country’s working class. Meanwhile, the WRP collaborates with other present and former miners and smelter workers campaigning to protect their homes threatened by financial chicanery by former mine-owners in cahoots with the government and in pursuing claims against their employers for work-related illnesses.

The WRP(N) also stands four-square with:

Railway workers trying to track down the theft of state property;

Road workers protesting against bullying, malpractice and neglect of health and safety by their foreign employers contracted to develop the country’s road network;

Fishery workers on the Atlantic coast who have been on prolonged strike against diminishing wages, overwork and dangerous conditions. From being the best-paid workers in the country, they have become among the lowest-paid, while government-sponsored corruption lets foreign businesses ransack the rich fisheries around Walvis Bay;

Home-owners defending their homes against collusion between crooked lawyers and financiers who try to dispossess them;

Young people demanding access to homes;

Small farmers protecting their traditional lands against seizure by business interests;

Ethnic groups who suffered under German colonial rule seeking access to the compensation pocketed by SWAPO ministers;

Bushmen too now have a WRP(N) member among their leaders.

Former soldiers seeking access to their pensions, also stolen by SWAPO ministers;

Former Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) fighters seeking acknowledgment of and compensation for the deaths and other sufferings inflicted on them by the SWAPO leaders during liberation.

The WRP(N) won two parliamentary seats in the 2014 elections, but is denied the official resources which should accompany this electoral success. The party has had to spend a good deal of time fighting off a state-inspired sham “breakaway” which seriously impeded its work.

Nevertheless it held a very successful second congress in 2015 and is now developing a network of branches and conducting a serious programme of theoretical education in Marxism for the new forces coming into the leadership of the Party.

And the WRP is now in touch with the United Front established by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and is preparing to collaborate in its work.

A decisive political break in South Africa

NUMSA launched the United Front initiative in connection with the decisive break with Stalinism in which it is engaged. NUMSA has correctly declared the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to be bourgeois parties and called for a Movement for Socialism to build a Marxist workers’ party.

What they have established is a genuine United Front bringing community groups together with trade unions led by the working class. Its purpose is to stand up for real working class communities in the context of extreme inequality, exploitation of workers, unemployment (especially among young people) and mass poverty.

NUMSA’s aim in building the United Front (and a Marxist workers’ party) is to transform the National Democratic Revolution of 1994 (which left the working class out of the picture and maintained the imperialist exploitation of South Africa intact) into a socialist revolution led by the working class.

The United Front has appealed directly to Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International for political, practical and material assistance in standing United Front candidates in South Africa’s local elections on 3 August.

We are sure these developments inspire and encourage our sympathisers and supporters as they do us. We have a target of £5,000 and very little time. Please give generously.

How you can donate
 1. Use the button on the top right hand corner of the workersinternational.info home page marked ‘donate’, making clear that your donation is for the Southern Africa Appeal.

2. To transfer from your bank account, send donations to:
Unity trust Bank
Account: The Correspondence Society
sort:  60 – 83 – 01
account: 20059400

3.  Send cheques made out to Correspondence and marked on the back “Southern Africa Appeal” to : PO Box 68375, London , E7 7DT, UK.

Yours in solidarity,

Bob Archer

Inside this issue:
Europe:
Who can solve the ‘Refugee Crisis’ by Mirek Vodslon
How can we build a workers’ Europe? by Bronwen Handyside
Draft Programme: A Europe fit for working people (for discussion)
Namibia:
Director of Elections, a letter and a communiqué
Committee of Parents / Truth & Justice Commission demands
Continued Human Rights Abuses
Report of a book launch
MUN Regional Committee supports Marikana inquiry call
Namibian Road authority’s reckless roads
Religious ideology:
Discussion Article by Allen Rasek
South Africa:
UF march call

Out now! Issue Number 3 of Namibia‟s proletarian newsletter The Worker.

This issue includes material relating to the recent Regional and Local Authority elections and the ongoing attack on the WRP by the SWAPO regime.

In this issue:

Namibia: 
Political Report to the Second Congress
Unified Programme of Namibian Working People
Basis of our discussions with CP
2014 Election Manifesto
Elements of a Programme for Namibian Mineworkers.
Keetmanshoop Municipal Election Manifesto

International:
For an Independent Inquiry into Marikana
Resolution: ‘Solidarity with Greek dockers’
Commemorating Liverpool Dockers’ struggle

The Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) in Namibia is a section of the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International.

It will hold its Congress in Windhoek on 1, 2 and 3 October 2015.

We appeal to socialists internationally to contribute to the fund for this Congress.

The WRP participated in the November 2014 elections and achieved a real breakthrough, winning two seats in the National Assembly after only four weeks of campaigning, travelling many hundreds of miles into the different regions of the country.

The working class in Namibia has responded through the WRP to the fact that they must fight for political power with a programme independent from the bourgeoisie, including the bourgeois nationalists who dominate the workers’ movement.

Workers International Journal  has published details of the way the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) – dominated state has responded to the election result. They have connived in setting up a fake “Workers Revolutionary Party” and used this as a pretext to block the funding to which the party is legally entitled. This is despite a ruling by their own Ombudsman which recognises our Party’s legitimacy. In fact SWAPO acts as representatives of the interests of the bourgeoisie in Namibia, desperate to stop any demands of working people from being heard in parliament.

So this cannot be a “normal” congress. We need to bring together the new forces that have emerged – often hundreds and hundreds of miles away – to discuss the problems facing various sections of workers and landless people and what kind of leadership and programme is now required.

It is on this basis that we seek your urgent financial support.

To those supporters who have already responded we give our heartfelt thanks.

The WRP estimates it could cost up to 300,000 Namibian dollars (= rand) in order to hold this Congress. That is approximately £14,000, or $22,000 US.

That is a very tall order indeed, but they assure us that however much we can raise, the Congress will, despite all difficulties, be held and carry out its business.

Bob Archer, 

Secretary,

Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International

If you can send a sterling-denominated cheque, please mail it to:

PO Box 68375, London E7 7DT, UK

If you are remitting by other means, please email us at info@workersinternational.info discuss how to transfer the money.

Inside this Issue:

Namibia: 
WRP(N) fights for its constitutional rights
Namibian miners demand “end evictions!”

Programme of the Fourth International: 
The Theses of Pulacayo (1946)

Europe: 
What next for Greece – and Europe?
Bosnia solidarity appeal
UK elections

15 June 2015
To Mr. Peter Katjavivi
Speaker of the National Assembly of Namibia

Sir,
we write to you in great concern about a campaign of slanders and threats, including death threats, which is targeting several members of our Namibian section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.
The authors of these criminal acts are members of a group around lay lawyer August Maletzky and former member of parliament Benson Kaapala. August Maletzky took this campaign to its highest point to date on Wednesday, 10 June, at about 18H30 when he shouted several times across the street at the house of our member and the legal representative of the WRP, comrade Hewat Beukes, that Hewat Beukes would be killed.
These threats by the Maletzky-Kaapala group have been multiplying and intensifying since you, Mr Katjavivi, as Speaker of the National Assembly, chose to promote this same group of violent and dishonest elements around Maletzky and Kaapala as a “faction” of the WRP on equal footing with WRP’s legitimate leadership and its only legal representative, comrade Hewat Beukes. You choose to ignore the fact that comrade Hewat Beukes is indeed the only legal representative of the WRP, a fact that is legally binding for everybody and especially for you in your function as Speaker of the National Assembly.

This is evidenced by your letter of the 21st of May, 2015, Ref 3/1/5/1, published by the Workers Revolutionary Party, by which you try to justify withholding from that Party the funds and offices to which it is entitled by law and by the votes of 13,328 Namibian citizens. Your arbitrary and illegal decision treats WRP voters as some second-class citizens whose political choice, embodied by the WRP and formulated in its electoral manifesto, are not entitled to be fully represented in the National Assembly and in the political life of Namibia.
That the Speaker of the National Assembly deems feasible such a blatant breach of law and such a massive denial of elementary democratic rights sheds a crude light on Namibian democracy. That the victims are the supporters of the sole workers party in Namibia shows unequivocally that the Speaker of the parliament of Namibia especially does not consider workers as worthy of being fully represented in that parliament.
We are sure that this lesson will not be lost on the workers and the poor peasants in Namibia and in other countries. But our primary concern at the moment is for the safety of our comrades. Obviously your promotion of the Maletzky-Kaapala group emboldens this group to ever more daring attacks on our members.
We ask you to rein in this group immediately. The first step to do so is to immediately start acting according to the law and release the funds and offices due to the WRP. Indeed, it is only your illegal stance on this question that entertains Maletzky-Kaapala group’s hopes to lay hand on funds and offices and thus encourages it to proceed with its dangerous, fraudulent and criminal activity.
We hold this group to be an instrument with which your party, SWAPO, tries not only to deprive the WRP, its voters and supporters of their democratic rights, but also to destroy the WRP politically and physically.
We inform you that not only our international organisation but the working class movement in Namibia and in several other countries hold your party and you personally responsible for all consequences past, present and future of your continued promotion and usage of the Maletzky-Kaapala group and of all other attempts to silence and destroy the WRP and the working class of Namibia.
We are certain that none of your actions, Mr Katjavivi, takes place without the knowledge and approval of your party and its supreme representative President Hage Geingob to whom we therefore send a copy of this letter.

Yours Sincerely,

for the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International,

Bob Archer
Secretary

[threecolumns]The Workers Revolutionary Party of Namibia (a section of the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International) is registered as a parliamentary party with long-standing member Hewat Beukes as its official responsible officer. In November 2014 the WRP took part in the Assembly (government) elections and won two seats.
However they faced problems immediately when parliamentary officials tried to insert a certain Willem Beukes as one of their MPs, whereas under Namibian law it is for each party itself to name its MPs. This being the case officialdom was obliged to back down. But this did not end the threats, interference, intimidation and harassment of the WRP.

The aim of the SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation) government is to silence effective opposition to their state-assisted looting of the country’s assets and natural resources. Therefore they are deeply opposed to the policies which the WRP wants to pursue in Parliament. These were detailed in the maiden speeches of the two MPs explaining that “we use parliament to advance the demands of the working class including the poor peasantry”. (NOTE: these two speeches are published in full in Workers International Journal no. 12, May 2015: web: workersinternational.info).

In cahoots with officials of the Namibian parliament, disgruntled, opportunist and politically backward elements are now attempting to close down the legally registered party and its responsible officer. These elements with craven respect for the “powers that be” are goaded on by unprincipled figures such as the well-known lay-lawyer Auguste Maletzky, who in text messages on 8 and 9 May denounced SWAPO and its leaders Sam and Utoni Nujoma in gutter language, but on 10 May, hand-in-glove with SWAPO officials, denounced the leader of the WRP saying: “You [Hewat Beukes] are not the leader of the WRP! And we shall prove it to you”.

With hopes of personal gain involving the funding available for a parliamentary office and parliamentary duties, these people organised a raid on the family home of Hewat and Erica Beukes (one participant brandishing a gun!). They held a “congress” on Sunday 17 May at a luxury Hotel in Windhoek not far – but a world away – from the great mass of tin huts in the city’s suburbs, and then on Monday 18 May a journalist from Republikein newspaper informed Hewat Beukes that the paper had received a press statement from Maletzky stating that this “congress” had “elected” new leaders of the WRP and carried out expulsions!

For over three decades and with huge personal tragedy, the leaders of the WRP in Namibia have stood with the workers, poor farmers and oppressed ethnic groups in their country;
• first in the struggle against apartheid,
• then against “liberation” leaders who held back the struggle, exploited and abused genuine freedom fighters and murdered them, delivered them over to apartheid forces, imprisoned them in holes in the ground and tortured them
• then – against a corrupt regime brought in by an unholy alliance of the USSR, western imperialist business interests and western governments – fought for over two decades against exploitation, legal chicanery and attempted class violence on the part of the new SWAPO state.

This is the principled and recognised leadership of the Workers Revolutionary Party of Namibia who dare to organise and speak out. It is therefore easy to see why the authorities urgently need to frustrate the wishes of the 13,328 Namibians who voted for the WRP. Under pressure and in public the SWAPO government is hoping to assuage opposition by “admitting” it has made “mistakes” and it will now work hard to do better, but behind the scenes SWAPO is fuelling attacks on the opposition – the WRP.

The “International Updated Report” from the WRP Namibia details the behind-the-scenes alliance between parliamentary officials of the SWAPO regime (the Speaker of Parliament and the Secretary of the National Assembly) with this group which hopes to “dismantle the Workers Revolutionary Party and set up a surrogate” (http://workersinternational.info/2015/05/international-report-from-wrp-namibia/).

We are now calling upon all socialists and upholders of democratic rights to defend the WRP of Namibia. The following questions are being put to the Speaker of the Namibian Assembly:
• On what legal basis does he disregard due communications by the WRP’s statutorily authorized representative?
• On what legal basis does he communicate with unauthorized persons?
• On what basis does he accept illegal communications (without the registered logo, name, address, authorized rep) which constitute criminal offences?
• On what legal basis does he suspend payment and offices?

We in the Workers International have spent our lives facing down attempts to bully and intimidate us, and we do not take such threats lightly. We will take all necessary steps to stop any intimidation. The WRP Namibia has over many years of struggle established a real alliance with the many oppressed and exploited sectors in the country:
• ethnic groups struggling to maintain their lands against sell-off to foreign business interests, and for a fair share of the reparations from the former colonial power;
• home-owners who are unconstitutionally foreclosed;
• miners and civil servants and others robbed of their pensions;
• workers struggling for a living wage.

The WRP Namibia has made considerable progress over the last couple of years. The party may suffer setbacks and blows orchestrated by the SWAPO regime manipulating opportunists who follow individual and sectional agendas. Such people have no confidence in the way forward involving the working class and poor farmers acting in their own class interests. But the WRP is a section of the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International, and that body is precisely based on such confidence, not just in Namibia but all over the world.

So we will support each other in resisting and overcoming all such setbacks along the road of rebuilding the international leadership of the working class. We ask all those who have the interests of the working class at heart
1. To protest at these attempts to stifle and silence the WRP of Namibia.
Protests can be sent to:
j.jacobs@parliament.na and
parliament@parliament.gov.na

2. Contact the WRP Namibia (at PO Box 3349 Windhoek, tel 061-260647, or email jacobusjosob@ymail.com) to express your support and solidarity and if possible arrange to donate to the comrades’ fighting fund. Donations to the Workers International account: Account name: “Correspondence”, Unity Trust Bank, Sort Code: 08-60-01, Account number: 20059400
[/threecolumns]

An investigation into the operations of a strike force set up by one August Maletzky, Harry Boesak, Willem Beukes, and Benson Kaapala in cooperation with the Speaker of Parliament and the Secretary of the National Assembly to dismantle the Workers Revolutionary Party and set up a surrogate has produced the following insight:

The Speaker and the Secretary as far back as 8 May 2015 went into verbal and written communications with the said group regarding efforts to dismantle the WRP and to set up an organization with the same name.

On 9 May 2015 the group sent a group to a WRP Politbureau meeting at the house of Hewat and Erica Beukes where one of them threatened to shoot Cds Jacobus Josob and Sageus Tjihenuna, and anyone who worked with Hewat Beukes. He had to be restrained and dragged out of the house where he continued his threats both physical and politically. Most of the group were unknown lumpent elements.

The seriousness of these threats became only clear when it came to light that this group was operating under the direction of the Speaker, Professor Peter Katjavivi, Secretary Jakes Jacobs, a magistrate Oupa Britz, August Maletzky and Harry Boesak.

This group scheduled a meeting at the Safari Motel for 17 May 2015 for a meeting with persons to come from all over the country. The meeting alone will cost at least R60,000.00.

The following extracts from August Maletzky’s email and cell phone messages which he sent around regarding his new masters and afterwards his tirades and threats carried to practicality by his operatives against Hewat Beukes shows clearly to what extent and lengths the Speaker, Professor Peter Katijavivi would go to connive against the WRP.

It is a statement of character spanning the entire exile era.

Maletzky used the crudest and the most uncouth language against the Professor’s party associates, but he does not wince for a second. Maletzky upon agreements turns right around and directs his total and absolute lack of culture against Hewat Beukes without a murmur from the Learned Professor.

The crude swearing of Maletzky constitutes crimen injuria, but our lawmaker has no qualms to associate himself.

The fact that he uses legitimate objections against the SWAPO whilst having no qualms to make a 180 degree turn-around shows the unprincipled character of the person.

Hewat Beukes you called me an inveterate criminal, and apologized after I compelled your sorry ass to. Well, Hewat Beukes, your sorry ass days are numbered. Do the right thing now, face the inevitable consequences. Freaken fool, thank your stars for having your teeth intact. Your dream is about to be shattered. Hungry Poes.. August Maletzky 08/05/15 20:04

August Galax8 May at 11:43 The Truth will always prevail….Swapo’s betrayal of their own freedom fighters disclosed by non other than Mihe Gaomab. They, Swapo, are a disgrace and an insult to humanity. That is why they like parasites, survive by rigging elections!

We call on our members and our international comrades to support us in our struggle against the perverse and contemptible methods used by the Namibian Parliament to threaten the lives of our leaders, destroy the WRP and deny the Namibian electorate the right to elect their own representatives. We call on them to make their aversion to this perversion of Universal Franchise known to the world and the Namibian Parliament.

The bourgeoisie backslap and award these anti-democrats for sending the Namibian Nation deeper into the abyss. These are crucial actions by the imperialists to legitimize their surrogates.

Kindly make the contrary statement.

We call on our members and our international comrades to support us materially and financially to mobilise our defence against this vicious enemy and to exercise the right to build our party.

We assure you that nothing will deter us!

Signed: Hewat Beukes,Authorised representative
WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY TO REBUILD THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
P.O. Box 3349 Windhoek Fax: 088641065 Tel: 061-260647 jacobusjosob@ymail.com 15 May 2015

Inside this issue:
Namibia:
‘This house will have to hear the independent voice of the working class’ Maiden speech of WRP parliamentarian Benson Kaapal
‘We will put forward the seizure of our natural resources to enable us to fund the upliftment of the working class and poor peasantry’ Salmon Fleermuys addresses Parliament
WRP Namibia’s response to Sam Nujoma
‘You are not welcome at our commemoration’ A letter to the President of Namibia from the Baster Community in Rehoboth
Hewat and Erica Beukes on behalf of the Beukes and Thiro families: Do not attend!

South Africa
Statements and postings by the United Front
Irvin Jim’s input to the conference for socialism
Report of a Workers International delegation to Johannesburg

Bosnia:
Suicide bid of two workers, former combatants
An appeal to the international labour community