Fri Mar 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Imperialist Barbarism in Africa

The Cyclone Idai in the South-West Africa has caused, until now, 446 deaths just in Mozambique. The estimate of the president Filipe Nyusi is that around 1.000 people are dead, but it has not been confirmed yet. About 2 million people were affected; there are more than 100.000 homeless and 90.000 students without school.

By: Marina Peres and Americo Gomes

In Mozambique, a large area still flooded; more than 2 thousand kilometers, between Pungue and Buzi rivers. The government evaluates that 100.000 people need to be rescue and other 600.000 have been affected by floods, slips and landslides. A 100 kilometers long range is totally inundated, according to the Environment Ministry, in Beira, the most impacted district. In Búzi, Chibabava, Muanza, Mossurine and Sussundenga, Beira’s neighboring districts, thousands of Mozambicans continue on the rooftops of the few remaining houses or on the crowns of the trees that resisted the strength of the Búzi and Pungué rivers. Since Saturday, those rivers have overflowed and caused floods at the region.

For many days, the vehicles were out of circulation. The phone network was interrupted. There wasn´t also electricity. The health system is in a complete state of chaos. There are cases of dysentery, risk of cholera and typhoid fever. There are protests for water, food, shelter and medicines.
After destruct Beira, the second huge Mozambique’s city, with winds of more than 117Km/h, and torrential rain in the sequence, the cyclone advanced to neighboring countries – Zimbábue and Malawi -.

In Zimbábue, around 200 people, including 30 students, remain disappeared. The survivors are still being sought in the rubble.

Idai is already considered the worst tropical storm that affected the region on the last decades, and might be one of the worst to reach the southern hemisphere’s southeast, according to the United Nations (UN).

The multinational corporations and imperialist countries responsibilities in Austral Africa

The European colonization in Africa, at the end of the 19th century, in the eastern southern was contested by the British crown and the German Reich. The Portuguese crown, in Mozambique, already had a second role, putting their forces at the service of the Britons, and to act as a buffer against the German expansion.
The damages that Imperialism caused to this region, concerning the exploitation of the natural resources and peoples overexploitation are the causes of the misery in which the populations of these communities are living.

Tragedies like these occur in other countries, like United States; however, they are better equipped to face it. Even there, we can notice that the poorest workers are the ones who suffer the most, but not in these proportions, because these countries have much more money and much more structure to lead with these natural disasters.

But it is not related just with the past. The imperialist countries governments and the management of the multinational companies, that are primarily responsible for the global warming must respond for the damages caused to the planet, especially when reach the countries least responsible for this problem, like Mozambique. The companies that control 66% of the world trade are establishing new forms of labor division that besides the destruction of the global environment, are making unviable any means of national control.

National exploitation

Moreover, these multinationals earn a lot with the unbridled exploitation of the natural resources in Africa. Notably, Mozambique has a huge energy potential; for example, the mineral coal, which reserves are estimated in more than 20 billion tons, and natural gas, calculated in 277 trillion cubic feet; besides that, hydric resources which potential is 18.000 MW. All of this could provide good conditions to satisfy not only Mozambique’s domestic needs, but also the needs of Austral Africa.

However, the low industrial level, the shortage of skilled workforce and the transnational’s greed lead to an exploitation of these riches only aiming the transnational profits, bringing up a negative impact on the local communities life, the working conditions and over the environment. There isn’t a foreseeable project of sustainable use to product these resources.

Moreover, these multinationals are affiliated to the national corruption system and to the actual bribery industry existent in the country. The worker’s wages are miserable, to say the least, and their work conditions are absolutely precarious.

These transnational companies earn million dollars and Euros in Mozambique, in the same way as the American and Chinese multinationals gain unimaginable profits in Zimbabwe, both connected to the bourgeoisie bureaucracies, linked to the military apparatus, totally corrupt and violent.

Overthrow the general’s regime

In this moment of pain for the death of our brothers and sisters in black Africa, we need to have a lot of class solidarity and companionship and look for a way to help them. But we can’t forget who are the truly responsible for these tragedies, to carry out the real changes to prevent their repetition.

The working class can’t trust in none of the military bands who govern Zimbabwe or Mozambique. Both came from organizations generated on the anti-colonialist armed struggle, like the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique). Nowadays, these countries are ruled for bourgeois-bureaucrats-generals as Emerson “crocodile” Mnangagwa and Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, who control bonapartists and anti-democratic regimes.

Built a solution for the Austral African workers

The workers must construct their own way out, with their organizations and process of mobilization, to defend their claims.

Is needed solidarity with our brothers and sister’s workers, but without express any support to Mnangagwa and Nuysi’s government; require free elections for now, to new governments, and a Constituent Assembly – including the creation of new workers party – with the power to form new institutions and nationalize the lands, expropriating the governing gang’s properties, to perform a real agrarian reform, as well as the nationalization of all the mining industry, under workers control.

Only a workers and poor people government can guarantee the rational use and exploitation of the non-renewable natural resources, and establish legislative regulations to control the industrial activities for the benefit of the community, assuring the economic and social development of the country. At the same time, the environment could be preserved, to make possible for the future generations the usufruct of these resources, the satisfaction of their needs and the continuity of the national development, taking into account the infrastructures improvement, the human capital and the fight against poverty.

Continue the anti-colonial struggle is require from the multinationals and capitalist industries compensation for historical damages. As well the German imperialism in Namibia and Tanzania, the British imperialism owe compensations to Zimbabwe and, just as the Portuguese, to Mozambique.

Indemnities for damages caused to the people and the environment, for the violence used against the populations; return of the works of art, the occupied lands and raw materials usurped.

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