Disaster in East Africa Caused by Capitalism and Imperialism
*Mass deaths from Cyclone Idai expose racism, imperialism, class oppression
*Capitalism causes climate change – it must be ended
*Urgency expressed in Youth Climate Strike must translate into mass mobilization for communism.
On March 14 and 15, Cyclone Idai swept through Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in eastern Africa, killing hundreds of our working-class family. It wiped out 90% of the infrastructure of the Mozambique city of Beira. It displaced up to a million people.
On the same day that Idai made landfall, the One Planet Summit, called by French president Macron, started in Nairobi, Kenya. Kicking off “Africa Climate Week,” the rulers of African countries met in comfortable air-conditioned rooms. They discussed planting more trees. This deliberately covers up the growing imperialist investment in coal and oil extraction and coal-fired power plants in the continent.
Also at the same time, hundreds of thousands of students from primary schools to university in 123 countries staged a stay-away strike. They demanded urgent action on climate change.
Storms such as Cyclone Idai, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, and Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005 lay bare the nature of racism, imperialism, and class oppression. The poorest and most oppressed people are those who die in these events. They are murdered by a capitalist system which turns a natural phenomenon into a human disaster.
But storms such as these expose the larger problem of climate change caused by capitalism.
Ordinary people are not the root cause of climate change. Campaigns like South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Good Green Deed, which encourages people to do one good green action per day, cover up the real problem. Just 100 companies produce 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Mozambique is a prime example of the inequalities of global warming. The United Nations ranks this country 180 out of 189 countries on a measure of education, economic prosperity and life expectancy. It contributes a measly 0.14% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
At least half of the population of Mozambique lives in poverty. The divide between rich and poor is quickly becoming more extreme. The legacy of colonialism and civil war has made the masses vulnerable to extreme weather and rising ocean levels.
The UN’s August 2018 Climate Change report warned that drastic action to reverse climate change is necessary in the next decade. This underlines the urgency of mobilizing the masses for communism now, as we explained in Red Flag Vol. 9 #14.
This is what has galvanized young people around the world. They know that this is an unprecedented disaster. They are demanding that the rulers take action.
That’s like demanding that mosquitoes stop sucking the blood of their hosts. Profit is the life blood of capitalism. And capitalist competition requires maximum profit—the survival of the masses on this planet be damned! We can’t expect that politicians who have always been in the capitalists’ pockets will suddenly fight for the well-being of exploited masses.
What the young people around the world—and all of us—must do is get rid of the capitalist blood-suckers and their system. Capitalism can’t be reformed—it must be replaced. We need communism, where we’ll fight for safe renewable energy and infrastructure because the motive will be workers’ lives instead of profit.
The urgency that the young people feel about the planet’s survival must translate into urgent action to mobilize the masses for communist revolution.
As the mass murder of our working-class family in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe teaches us—there’s no time to waste.
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