the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
February 16, 2026
Weeks-long stretches of intensely heavy rain in southern Africa so far this year have caused enormous damage. Some parts of Mozambique saw 10 inches of rain fall in a day. Entire villages of sun-dried brick homes in Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Eswatini, and Madagascar were submerged, with people stuck in trees and on the tops of buildings.
Far more than a million people were affected, more than 400,000 cattle, goats, and poultry drowned, and thousands of miles of roadway and bridges were washed away. Cholera spread as people who can’t afford five cents for a five gallon jug of clean water drank, cooked, and washed with river water contaminated with human and animal waste. Crocodiles drifting in the bloated rivers have killed a number of people.
Experts say the world’s increasingly hotter and wetter climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels amplifies the effects of this year’s La Niña weather pattern. This event happens once or twice each decade, when trans-ocean trade winds become stronger for a number of months for complex and incompletely known reasons, heating up the southern hemisphere. This can lead to more extreme rainstorms there. But warmer and wetter air ratchets up the impact. This year’s rainy season floods are the worst in decades.
The great powers have extracted fortunes in mineral and agricultural wealth from southern Africa. Why do people there not have five cents to buy clean water? It’s the legacy of the same capitalist system which is scalding the planet.