body-container-line-1
03.07.2018 Feature Article

Letter To A Galamsey Apologist

Letter To A Galamsey Apologist
03.07.2018 LISTEN

Dear H,

Your message to me was to the point. You wanted to know why I worry my head about the involvement of Chinese people in galamsey in Ghana.

The Chinese man in Szechuan Province doesn't know where Ghana is on the map.

It's only the affluent and rich in [Ghanaian] society who are responsible. When I was growing up in the fifties, galamsey was in existence, but it was limited to shovel, head-pan and pick-axe. And rope. Blame Mahama for the arrival of heavy-duty machinery”.

First of all, I don't want to blame any political party or leader for the use of heavy-duty equipment in galamsey. Whereas in the past, those who finance galamsey would have hidden themselves from public view, these days they brandish their political muscle for everyone to see. They are I all parties and openly boast: “Do you know the office I hold? Can you match me in influence? You talk and talk. We shall see who counts in this country!”

I must remind you that in every country, there are such traitors who work against the good of their own nation. Whilst Britain's World War Two leader, Winston Churchill, was rallying the British to fight against Hitler with the memorable words: “We shall fight on the beaches” etc., there were British nationals – such as “Lord Haw-Haw” – who were collaborating with the Nazis!

You are right in pointing out that in the days of your youth, gold-digging was carried out with pick-axes, shovels head-pans and ropes. In fact,so much gold was produced here by those “primitive” methods that the name given to our country by one of its trading partners (Great Britain) was “the Gold Coast”. Earlier, another trading partner, Portugal, had created a fort and named it La Mina (The Mine); today's fort town of Elmina.

But our ancestors usedtheir brains when they dug for gold. The entrances to their pits were made deliberately narrow so as not to damage the landscape and create a hazard for farmers and hunters. When they abandoned a pit, theyplanted vegetation known as awaha or ntorme which visibly alertedeveryone that people had worked there in earlier times.

So, in my town in the Eastern Region, for instance, there are many “nkomena” [gold-digging pits] around, but never did I hear that anyone had fallen into one. We were taught to recognise the signs indicating where the pits were, and to avoid them, for, of course, our wise elders had our welfare at heart and had the foresight to realise that they could kill their descendants if they were only motivated by their greed for gold and not concerned with of safety of their children and children's children.

But today's gold-diggers are a different breed altogether. They don't careabout anybody but themselves. They do not only dig pits; they dig whole craters!And,not with pick-axes and shovels, but excavators and bulldozers! Nor do they use a pan to wash the gravel for gold, but “chan-fang” machines imported from China! They also do not use a mere head-pan to wash the gold with water: they employ dangerouscarcinogenic chemicals like mercury and cyanide.

So deadly are the activities of the modern Ghanaian gold-digger that if our ancestors were alive and were to catch any of them in their murderousact, our ancestors would have lynched them on the spot. For the galamsey man does not care that a whole river is turned into mud because of his activities. He does not care that fish are killed by the mercury and cyanide he uses.

Our ancestors would have asked them just one, simple, rhetorical question:“Na ensuo a yeƐnom deƐ, yƐde afidie tutu aseƐsƐn?”(But as for a river that provides people with drinking water, how can you dig underneath it with a machine?) Before anyone could have even attempted to answer that question with a silly reply, he would have been slapped all over the place. And what would happen to him later would be nobody's business.

You see, our ancestors believed in ensuring their community's collectivesurvival.And they asked questions based on common sense and reality. Questions such as: “You say you have a licence to dig for gold. But did the government that gave you the licence tell you to use it to turn our farmland into an unusable moonscape? Do you have a licence to turn our drinking water into poisonousalgae-infested mud?”

What you have to understand, my friend, is that blaming governments and parties is not the issue. Even the worst government could not possibly have foreseen that any licences it issued would be used – illegally, anyway, since they had not beenratified by Parliament – to destroy drinking water and food farms. That is done because of the sheer stupidity of the modern-day Ghanaian who carries out galamsey and thinks that a “licence” from the Government absolves him from using his brains.

This Ghanaian goes to China and tells Chinese business people, “Oh, come with me to Ghana. Or give me some workers to take to Ghana. The place is full of gold. Just bring some machines and we shall take you to where the gold is.”

If a Chinese businessman invests money in bulldozers and chan-fangs sends men and they are taken to River Ankobra or Birem or Pra or Offin, do you expect him to react by saying, “But we wouldn't be allowed to do that to theYangtze River in China?”

Of course not. He would be worrying about his investment. He would say, “Ho! These people are politically primitive! And they are lawless! They don't understand that the welfare of the collective is more important than the welfare of the individual! So they destroy the water of thousands of people, in order to obtain gold for a few. This is what Mao Tse-dong and his comrades constantly preached against. Have these people never heard of the principles behind “The Great Leap Forward?” Of “The Little Red Book”? Of the “Cultural Revolution?”

“ We in China had to go through very troubled and sometimes bloodstained stages in order to reach our current level of social development and economic power. These people in Ghana are proper fools, but what can we say? We are not here to teach them politics or to be law-abiding!”

My dear H, if the Chinese could open their hearts to you, that's what they would tell you. But you don't ever see them, do you? – unless they are taken to court on galamsey issues? You are lucky you never do meet them, for I am sure if they look at the level of patriotism, to say nothing of ordinary commonsense, that they encounter amongst many Ghanaians, they would want to spitat us!So, H, in a way you are right. The Chinese have their own interests to protect. But one would wish that in the spirit of Afro-Asian solidarity; in the spirit of the long-standing friendship between the Chinese people and the people of Ghana; the galamsey issue would be handled with more subtlety and understanding. It isn't a nice thing to see a friend making a fool of himself. If you are a true friend, you put forward ideas: such as “You know, we could do this thing in another way; one that would give us a win-win situation, you know?”

That's how true friendship works. Taking advantage of someone else's ignorance or stupidity or greed cannot be a sign of true friendship. No.

body-container-line