Even the devil rested

In 2023 Joy FM’s Erastus Asare Donkor released the documentary POISONED FOR GOLD. It was yet another compelling evidence of the evil destruction of the country’s forest reserves and water bodies for gold. He said ten major rivers including the Ankobra, Tano, and Offin have been taken over by lead, arsenic, chromium and cadmium.

A painstaking investigation that exposed his personal safety, the journalist presented his evidence before the public. In interviews on radio and television, he did not say headpan and shovel-carrying illegal miners were the characters behind the destruction of our forest. He said those behind the destruction are heavyweights with supervised protection from the corridors of political power. Prior to his work, Accra-based Citi FM had championed a campaign against illegal mining or Galamsey. The management of the station committed every liner of its being to it unfortunately, the state failed to act.

Like a warlord who goes to sit at peace talks and pretend to be negotiating for peace while at the same time recruiting war children, the government adopted the cow dung approach. A year ago, Al Jazeera published a report about how food vendors in mining communities are using polluted water to cook for their customers. The same video shows scenes of residents drinking from the very same polluted water. These innocent people are forever going to carry a burden visited on them by those elected to protect them. The impact of Galamsey on inadequate water supply to major parts of the country is already being felt.

So, when on Monday, September 2, 2024, I heard security expert Professor Kwesi Aning on the Galamsey issue on the JoyFm Super Morning Show, I had a flashback to that documentary by Erastus. Prof.  Aning and two others including the Chief Executive of the Ghana Water Company, were speaking on the back of a statement the water company had issued on the impact of illegal mining on its operations.

I came across the statement on social media.  The company explained the water shortage in Elmina, Cape Coast and surrounding communities. It says the “recent demand-supply gap is a result of inadequate raw water received at the Sekyere Hemang Water Treatment Plant (WTP) as a result of Galamsey.”

The statement further went on to talk about the pollution of the famous Pra river, and how that has reduced water supply.

“About 60 per cent of the catchment capacity is silted as a result of illegal mining(Galamsey)compromising the quality of raw water. The statement, signed by management, concluded with the message: WE WISH YOU A HAPPY FESTIVAL… Afehyia Paa oooo!!!!!

For those who may not be aware, the annual Fetu Afahye by the people of Cape Coast or Oguaa comes off this weekend. It is a festival that attracts hundreds of both domestic and foreign visitors.  Several areas in Accra have also been hit by water shortages. Prof. Aning said Galamsey has now become a TRANSNATIONAL CRIME. He said proceedings from the illegal mining operation are classified as part of the illicit financial flows. He then proceeded to wonder how a country that is not at war is polluting its own water bodies for gold.

“In wartime, you destroy water bodies to prevent the enemy from accessing water. But we are doing it to ourselves without any such threat.”

The forest reserves are being butchered at a rapid rate, whilst the political leadership continues to approve MILLIONS OF CEDIS for planting trees to ostensibly secure the future of the environment. Then there is also the case of mass participation in United Nations-organised climate summits, where recycled speeches are made to please the cameras. Who are we fooling with this drama?

When President Nana Akufo Addo said he was prepared to put his presidency on the line as part of the fight against Galamsey, he received plaudits and rightly so. After all, the Commander in Chief has shown that he is ready to bite. I share a WhatsApp group with some environmental activists and some had zero expectations of the president’s pledge.

One of the messages that caught my attention was from a then PhD student in Environmental Law in the United States. I starred the message just to be sure.  He said: “Nana Addo is just tickling the balls of the chiefs to get them excited….he won’t do foko.”  He then asked anyone willing to put money in to come forward. Nobody did.

But post that declaration and the scale of ongoing destruction to our forest reserves, he has been vindicated. The expectation was that once the president put his job on the line, he would go after the REAL CULPRITS and make a good example of them- not AREA BOYS with HEAD PANS AND SHOVEL, who are arrested and thrown into overnight cells.

By pledging to put his presidency on the line, the Commander in Chief admitted to vacating his office if the fight against Galamsey is not won.

“If, by the grace of God, my party allows me to go again and I have the health and everything to go again but do not get it again, then I will say to myself: ‘Well, this is a choice I have to make as a human being.’ Do you do what is right or what you think will make you get along? I think you do what is right and what you are required to do.”

Can the president read this quote and say he is fighting the menace, or that he is getting along with it? The evidence is on the ground. Another soundbite for the headlines, maybe. The Forestry Commission says more than thirty forest reserves have been mauled by illegal mining. And the numbers may even go up if the carnage is not stopped.

This same illegal mining has led to the unfortunate murder of a young soldier, leaving behind a young wife and children. The brutal murder provoked the military to invade the community in a revenge attack. Sadly, there are reports of military officers providing cover for Galamsey Kingpins and their allies.

I have heard the president speak glowingly about the success of the fight against Galamsey. I sometimes wonder about the kind of briefing he is offered by those he has tasked to watch his back. Disruptive leaders, we are told, are the ones who take the hard road even if it displeases their friends and praise singers. Because they know generations after they stand to gain from their commitment to the national cause. And they are properly immortalised beyond the NOW. After all, the praise singers, like everyone else, will die and history will not remember them for anything beyond what they are noted for. It is their generation that bears the scars of their actions, sadly.

In his eulogy to the memory of the father of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong wrote: “At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”

As Ghanaians, we don’t ask much from our leaders. We just want them to do right by us. And that is what we seek from this president and the government. This is Ghana bequeathed to us by the brains behind the formation of the Aborigine Rights Protection Society, who devoted their lives to saving our lands from the hands of the colonial masters. This is the Ghana bequeathed to us by those behind the formation of the UGCC, CPP and many other tribal-based parties, who devoted their time and energy to the saving of the environment. Not that they did not have GREEDY elements with insatiable appetite for the illegal acquisition of wealth, but they tamed the appetite of such characters by confronting the wrongs in the system, limited as their strength may be.

Like I always say or tell friends, people elect leaders with the right intentions and hope they do right by them, even if all their human frailties.

Let me digress a bit and draw a comparison of the president’s commitment level to the fight against Galamsey and the building of the now-stalled national Cathedral. The President committed every line of his bone to the project, and those suspected to have opposed it were called Sanballat and Tobias. Millions of public funds have been devoted to the pit expected to house the Cathedral. Nobody knows when the structure will be raised. I am not sure a country whose financial strings are being pulled by the International Monetary Fund can afford to sink more money into the project. Has it become an albatross around the neck of Ama Ghana?

Today as we speak, fishermen living around mining towns are out of jobs. The rivers are floating right into the sea and either killing the fish or driving them away, because the polluted bodies enter the sea and add to the destruction. What is more precious to the sight of God than protecting that which he created for man to seek comfort from?

When I read a quote from UTV attributed to one government communicator that “Elect Dr. Bawumia to fight galamsey in the future,” I thought I did not read right. I then proceeded to listen to the audio. Ironically, the said communicator comes from a town being ravaged by illegal mining. He stood to be elected as a parliamentary candidate but was not successful.

Why must the destruction of our forest reserves be postponed at the convenience of parochial electoral fortunes, whilst communities suffer in agony? Is that all there is about power?

I think this is also the time for the religious bodies to begin to rise and demand answers from the leadership. Especially from the Christian community who were loud in their advocacy for the now-stalled Cathedral, this is the time for them to STAND UP AND BE COUNTED. The church must not always be about PRAYER, TONGUE SPEAKING, FASTING AND DIRECTIONS. Some of the leaders who backed the Cathedral have branches in the affected mining towns.

Their flocks are consuming poison by the minute. They cannot be talking about winning souls or spreading the gospel without being worried about the future of the environments sheltering their investments. Once those communities go down, the churches will equally fall. And with that more souls may be lost. There is a reason why we are Ghanaians and not Europeans or Americans. In 1929 when the great Ghanaian composer and musicologist Ephraim Amu composed “Yɛn Ara Asaase Ni” to wit “This is our Land,” he might have been inspired by the lush greens of the country’s forest belt, with birds flapping their wings and happily chirping in contentment.

This is not the land he and his peers envisioned as the present Ghana. Greed must have a limit, Mr. President.

Even the DEVIL RESTED at a point.