In Limpopo, South Africa, devastating floods expose the destructive power of extreme weather supercharged by a fossil fuelled climate crisis. Yet community resilience shines through as neighbours unite to rebuild and adapt amid climate extremes.
A low-pressure system that began in Mozambique gutted homes, washed away roads, and took more than 30 lives. In neighbouring countries, the death toll went into the hundreds and nearly a million people were displaced.
I have always known about rivers, dams, rainfall patterns and the quiet, persistent ways water shapes our landscapes. These are things we engage with daily, so I understood water’s nature – its necessity, its patience and its destructive potential. On paper, floods are statistics: millimetres of rain, breached river levels, damaged infrastructure.
But it was only when Daily Maverick’s children’s reporter, Tamsin Metelerkamp, photojournalist Felix Dlangamandla and I walked through Mbaula Village beside the now-quiet Mbaula River, one of the hardest-hit areas in Limpopo that the true power of water fully dawned on us.
No warning, just devastation
We walked through homes split open like cardboard boxes, fields once promising maize harvests smothered in mud and debris. We traced the more than 1km path along which one survivor had been swept. People described the water arriving with a roar; not a rise, but a wall that gave no warning, offered no mercy and left nightmares behind.
People described the water arriving with a roar; not a rise, but a wall that gave no warning.
In those moments, it became clear: water does not negotiate. When it overwhelms, it takes everything in its path. Yet amid the wreckage, another kind of power revealed itself. On the ground, we heard stories of neighbours pulling one another from the mud and sharing food, clothes and shelter with those who lost everything. Community leaders organised clean-ups before any official help arrived. Elders offered comfort, faith leaders led prayers and young people cleared debris with their bare hands.
Loss was everywhere, but so was solidarity.
The floods reminded us that while water can destroy villages, it cannot wash away human connection. In crisis, people did more than survive; they began to imagine how to build back safer and better.
Part of a global crisis
These floods are not isolated. They are part of a pattern we can no longer ignore. South Africa has endured devastating floods and prolonged droughts followed by sudden deluges and intensifying heatwaves. Globally, flooding, fires and storms continue to rewrite climate records. The science is clear: a warming world brings greater extremes – and communities already made vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather are paying the highest price.
What Limpopo demands now is not sympathy, but action. Climate adaptation must mean early warning systems that reach rural villages, land-use planning that respects floodplains, resilient housing, protected ecosystems and disaster responses that are swift, coordinated and humane.
The water has receded, but the questions it leaves behind are rising. How we answer them will shape our shared future.
Lerato Mutsila is a Daily Maverick journalist based in South Africa.
A version of this article was originally published by Daily Maverick Earth.
Guest authors work with Greenpeace to share their personal experiences and perspectives and are responsible for their own content.
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