East Africa, July 4, 2024—Last night a group of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members met with a small group of students, parents, teachers, and a man who runs a tutoring center. They were affected by severe flooding in a town in east Africa. They discussed how the government and the rich were to blame for the flood as well as the suffering that has followed.
Ever since British colonialism, this area has been prone to flooding. When it was clear there would be severe flooding again, the government should have diverted the flood water from human settlements, but the officials were more interested in protecting their own investments. For example, in order to preserve the huge profits from safari tourism, they redirected the flood waters away from the hippo lake in Ngorongoro Crater increasing the flooding where people live. One member of parliament who owns farms near Lake Eyasi, another place where the flood waters would have been redirected, blocked this in favor of redirecting it to where people live. The government organized temporary housing in churches and schools, but only a small number benefitted. They distributed a pitifully small amount of food.
Finance capitalists use the State to ensure profits
Many people who borrowed from banks to build homes no longer have homes to live in but still have to pay back the banks. They also lost their gardens and animals which they depend on for survival. Affected government workers are getting their debts automatically deducted from their salaries, which is one way the government and the banks are colluding to guarantee their profits. Because of these policies many of the affected don’t have the means to pay rent or build elsewhere. Some have been forced to move back into their damaged homes and impassable, disease prone neighborhoods without access to clean water.
The government officials knew that this was a flood prone area, but encouraged settlement anyway, splitting the area into plots to make the settlement official. (And, during the flooding they removed the individual plot markers to make it seem like an unofficial settlement, to try to absolve themselves of responsibility.) These corrupt government officials could never solve this problem because of their incompetence and self-interest. The workers, who knew how to divert the water, could have solved it but didn’t have the power to assert themselves.
Workers figure out strategies to fight back
Those at the meeting felt powerless but didn't want to feel like that. One man focused on going to local officials to solve the flood problem for the future, but that doesn’t address the problems that these workers are facing now. One comrade from the Caribbean shared stories about what they did around Covid relief when the government refused to take responsibility for the well-being of its citizens. With the financial solidarity of comrades and friends in the U.S., self-help brigades were formed to sew and distribute cloth masks and to set up communal sanitation stations where residents had no running water.
The meeting concluded with a group volunteering to buy some of the needed goods (mattresses, blankets, exercise books, pens, etc.) with money that PLP had raised for them. They plan to distribute them by prioritizing those most in need—the disabled, the elderly, single parent households, and school children. (The wheelchair of one disabled eight year-old boy was destroyed in the flood and has not been replaced.) They still need debt relief and new housing in a safe environment with electricity and clean water, but forming a self-help organization and distributing much needed items to affected families will empower them and could lead to more fightback against the banks and the government.
Next steps in organizing for communism
In this collective East African culture, helping each other comes naturally. PLP’s participation can make this small struggle a school for communism. This man-made disaster is a product of capitalism, a system that reduces working people to tools for the bosses’ profit. Fighting to make things better, like this reform struggle is doing, may or may not be won, but history has shown us that capitalism will always try to take back whatever workers win. We will remain on the defense until our class is running society in our own interest. Building our movement for communism is the most enduring victory possible.
