We Have Most Biting Laws: The Anarchy In Ghana

By I. K. Gyasi
 ”We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip” – The Duke, in Shakespeare's play, MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Duke Valencia in William Shakespeare's play, MEASURE FOR MEASURE, compares the laws of a country to the devices a horse rider needs in order to control the horse in his riding.

The horse rider needs the following devices: a bridle, a bit, rein, a pair of spurs and a whip.

The dictionary says that the bridle is a set of leader bands which is put on a horse's mouth as a way of controlling it.

The reins are a long narrow (usually leather) band fastened around the neck of a horse. The rider holds and pulls the reins in order to guide and control the horse.

The spurs are sharp, projecting points, worn on the heels of a rider's boots, and used for urging a horse to go faster. Finally, the whip is used to hit the horse, when necessary, to make it move faster.

Human beings may have been created in the image of God. Unfortunately, we do not have the perfection of God. Consequently, when human beings come together to form associations, or live as citizens of a country, they need laws to regulate conduct.

Just as a horse rider needs the devices mentioned above in order to be able to control his horse, so also we need laws to prevent deviant behaviour, or to impose corrective measures when deviant behaviour occurs.

Shakespeare's Duke Valencia's Vienna laments that in the fourteen years of his reign, he has failed to apply the laws of his dukedom.

Consequently, anarchy has rather reigned. Nobody respects the law any longer. As he put it,

'And liberty (license) plucks justice by the nose;

The baby beats the nurse…'
Ghana today, is like Duke of Valencia's Dike Vienna, we have strict and the most biting laws passed by the state, we have traditional norms, and we have moral teachings from our various religious faiths.

Yet, like Vienna, once again, our laws, norms and faiths, have failed to work. Of course, the problem of anarchy or the impunity with which we regard our laws did not start today, that is, at the time of the present government.

But, it is cold comfort to know that. What has happened? Take gold mining, for example. The authorities make us know that this country has laws governing gold mining. Yet, we do not see?

Even some of the fairly big mining companies have, with impunity, displayed wanton disregard for our laws. As for the so-called 'illegal miners' or 'galamsey operators,' the least said about them, the better.

Over the years, as a result of the uncontrolled activities of some of these foreign mining companies and local small-scale miners, land for food crops and for cash has been irreparably degraded.

Forest cover has been removed. Huge craters, posing a danger to human lives, have been left, with rain water filling them.

Cocoa and food farms have been destroyed; their owners threatened with death and forcibly deprived of their land.

Even more alarming, rivers and streams that provide the source of drinking water have either dried up as a result of these mining activities, or they have been irrespectively polluted and poisoned with mercury and cyanide.

Aquatic animals have died, and the inhabitants are threatened with the total absence of drinking water. While we might be tempted to think that is a local problem, we should realise that it is ultimately, a national problem that needs national attention. When such rivers as Offin, Densu, Pra, Birim and others are no more, or so heavily polluted and poisoned as to be unusable, it is literally the lives of the people that are at stake.

Sometimes, I try unsuccessfully to find out the differences between legal small-scale mining and the alleged illegal activities of so-called 'galamseyers'. What I mean to say is, in the long run, do both groups not degrade the environment (land and water) without taking any measures to do reclamation?

Do both of them not strip the land of its forest cover? Do both of them not divert the source of the river or stream flowing in the area of operation?

Local miners, whether 'galamseyers' or small-scale legal miners, pose a danger, but it is the Chinese, and some white people, who are doing maximum damage to the environment through their activities, whether legal or illegal.

I understand that quite recently, there was a film depicting some Americans brutalising a farmer, and yet, causing his arrest by the Ghana Police Service.

The pity of it all is that we Ghanaians obtain mining licenses and bring in the Chinese, ostensibly as technicians. In fact, they come with the heavy earth-moving machines that irreparably degrade the environment.

It is said that apart from those Ghanaians openly fronting for the Chinese and other foreign nationals, they are said to be both big and not-so-big traditional rulers, local landowners too myopic and too greedy to see the future, people in the highest reaches of government, politicians and other influential people involved.

The Chinese have become so insufferably bold that they arm themselves, and have been known to kill Ghanaians with impunity.

You must have heard the JOY FM story saying that in a village in China, the people have become very rich, because many of their fellow villagers have come here to do illegal mining. It was said by the news that one of them even sent a gold bar to his relations in that village.

The story also put the estimated number of Chinese illegal miners at fifty thousand. Who allowed them in?

Our inability to control haphazard mining is only one of the instances of our inability to apply the law in other areas of our lives.

We often refer to the observation by President Barrack Obama of the United States that we need strong institutions, and NOT strong men.

We have strong institutions. Who can doubt that? The problem is that strong institutions are inanimate things that can only be moved into action by strong men and women.

Unfortunately, our leaders at various levels and descriptions are shackled, hamstrung, emasculated, and handcuffed by various factors, including family and societal pressures, corruption and moral degeneration. We all share the blame.