Links between Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa are also impassable at this time. In Mozambique, four people died when a bus was swept away by raging floodwaters. Hundreds of traders and tourists were stranded when the major road between Mozambique and South Africa was cut off. Some 800 trucks are also stranded on the Botswana side of the border by high waters. South Africa is providing aid to Mozambique, where floods have isolated cities, leaving more than 100,000 needing aid.
Officials are concerned about the onset of disease.
In Mozambique's capital of Maputa, floodwaters damaged sanitation facilities, making the risk high for an outbreak of cholera or malaria. Mosquitoes that carry malaria live in stagnant water, and malaria is already Mozambique's biggest killer. More than two million people are infected each year, and as many as one in seven die. The floodwaters also destroyed crucial crops, and caused major damage in South Africa's famed Kruger National Park. Scores of tourists were evacuated from the park on Wednesday, disrupting one of South Africa's largest cash earners.