Summer flooding of the Lowveld rivers may look like this. When streams burst their banks untold hardship and deaths are masked by the muddy waters that will usually subside in a few days. Uprooted trees, dead animals and whatever was loose and will float are carried to the sea off Mozambique or some part of the way.

Sand and earth are taken away from riverbeds and land in the catchment areas, deposited elsewhere along the floodplains where new coverings of muddy silt and sand from upstream become the new topsoil.

Life carries on or begins again.