Galamsey is Fulani menace plus plus!
What exactly is the current public relations backlash against illegal artisanal mining supposed to achieve? And do we prove illegality by the mere fact of the destruction of water bodies and the adjoining environment or by the absence of a mining license?
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You may be wondering whether by these questions, I am doubting the sincerity and efficacy of the current campaign allegedly to save and conserve our water bodies, and you would be right.
This is because the answers to the above questions lie at the heart of the biggest problem associated with the galamsey problem; the immense economic benefits that its ardent practitioners derive from it.
These practitioners happen to be both local and foreign persons neck deep into a dangerous enterprise whose sole, primary and only motivation is the immense profits derived from it.
We have so far not addressed this aspect of galamsey, and yet we expect it to stop based solely on the obvious realisation by galamseyers that they must accept that they are destroying our water sources and our environment and endangering human life in this country thereby. It won’t happen.
The slave trade example
Morality did not stop slavery. In America, we all know it was civil war which ended slavery and the slave trade during the leadership of the 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, who was President from 1861 to 1865 when he was assassinated, all as part of the passions that this most profitable enterprise provoked.
It was the single largest transfer or confiscation of wealth from slaveowners in the history of that country, and perhaps worldwide. Who will believe that before abolition, Mississippi was the wealthiest state in the United States, because it had the largest number of slaves, and is now maybe the poorest?
The British case is even more instructive. It was abolished earlier in 1807. Let us select for our own education, William Wilberforce, one of the persons we were taught in school who was a great abolitionist. Even how Wilberforce got into parliament to champion this cause consistently for 33 unbroken years, is an object study in the power of institutionalised corruption. The abolition bill he had championed all this while, year after year, was only passed the year after he left the House of Commons, and he was carried to the public gallery to watch this moment in history as a spectator.
When that act was eventually passed, what happened which made it possible was the immense sums paid to British slaveowners and traders as compensation for the loss of their lawful business profit and prospects.
For slavery and the trade in it were both very legal, and abolition seemed to its beneficiaries as expropriation by a government most of whose leading members were active partakers in the trade! I remember very recently, reading a long article in an English newspaper accusing then Prime Minister David Cameron of being a member and descendant of one of those great political and economic families.
Those of us who are in banking know that the origins of Barclays Bank, for example, are firmly rooted in the slave trade of old. In certain respects, so is galamsey in Ghana in 2017. It is not a conspiracy. This is how societies develop in their histories, sometimes glorious, honourable and worthy of imitation, but at most times, byzantine, and dishonest and immoral to the core.
Anything for money
But the lure of gold cannot be underestimated. Men would do anything, anything, throughout the centuries of human existence, to get their hands on the gem. Let me give an American example. When gold was discovered in the Klondike in California in the 1840s, rich and greedy New York entrepreneurs will buy ships, crew them, and put on board their mining experts and others to sail around South America since the Panama Canal was not built then, dock at the nearest harbours nearest the Klondike, then presto, the lure of instant riches will compel both the experts and crew to desert their ships to go ashore in search of gold for themselves, instead of staking out claims for their New York financiers. The latter were then forced to send out whole crews to bring back their empty ships.
In 1987, the late former managing director of Ghana Commercial Bank, TE Anin, published his book, a collection of essays really, titled ‘’Gold in Ghana’’ in which he asserted, unchallenged to date, that our country has enough gold reserves to last for 700 years at the production rate of two million ounces a year. Yes, this means that this country can mine and win gold forever.
The meaning of this to the adventurous, the greedy, and the enterprising is very clear. Sermons and morality wont do the trick. I do not support what we call galamsey, that is, using unsafe and dangerous means and methods to win and mine gold. But there is no way I will support the argument that we must stop mining gold.
The attractions of this immense natural wealth must be tapped and tapped sustainably, by those of us who are involved or plan to get involved in it, if only to assure the rest of us above ground of a comfortable lifestyle. It is in the contradiction of safety, health and wealth that we must fashion a unique Ghanaian response to how things have turned out for us.
Harsh measures
This means that to save ourselves and use our resources, we must begin to consider very harsh measures we have refused to even contemplate even as we falsely believe that a mere public relations campaign will persuade anybody, local or foreign. We certainly do not have the resources to compensate those in it to stop.
We can stop all galamsey activities, cancel all licences, yes, all, for the year or two the experts say we need to rejuvenate our water bodies as we set out very deliberately, to make artisanal mining not only safe and profitable, but a source of employment for thousands of our compatriots who naturally would be attracted to this work. To do that, we must first gather the courage to make unsafe mining practices capital offences attracting the highest penalties.
To even begin in this way seeing that we have gone too far in the pollution of our water bodies to adopt a piecemeal approach, requires the steely will of the political classes in this country. Especially when you consider that the ruling party secured considerable support from the galamsey areas of the country. And that the election cycle is four years just around the corner, and we then apprehend the seriousness of our plight. It is a vicious political dynamite certain to terminate political careers and make others.
