Thank God For Erastus Asare Donkor, And Other TV Reporters

One cannot look at Ghana today without being filled with absolute disgust.

Where did Ghanaians learn their hypocrisy?

People have sworn to the President that they will show their appreciation for his appointing them, by loyally doing what he and his Cabinet think is best.

But out of his sight, they pray, “Lord, please help us survive! Don’t let him find out what we are doing behind his back!”:

When the President suspects “what” they are doing, he, as a lawyer, wants evidence, not rumours.
But where is the evidence to come from, if his officials hide it from him when they find it?

 

“We are doing community mining, Mr President!” they tell him, when he complains about the continuation of galamsey. But what is community mining? It is party hacks using the cloak of “higher authority (never specified) to continue carrying out galamsey. “The party needs money!” (They murmur and wink.)

If pressed, they say, “We have obtained licences from the Minerals Commission. But it may well be only “prospecting” licences that they’ve got, and which they have unilaterally turned into mining licences.

Does the Minerals Commission take care to inspect these so-called licences? Does it bother to ascertain the nature of the licences under which all galamsey operations are taking place?

 

Actually, is the Lands Commission authorised to issue licences to individuals and companies to operate as mining concerns, in the first place?

Doesn’t Article 268 of the 1992 Constitution lay it down that such “licences” granted for mining purposes must be “ratified” by Parliament? Why has this article been ignored by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and yet Parliament has done nothing about it? Is Parliament thereby not conniving at a blatant breach of the Constitution?

What is going on in Ghana? Do we have two layers of government? Do we have an outer layer (consisting of carefully crafted words) which acts correctly (in appearance) but whose “good faith” is negated by a hidden layer that operates in secrecy?

A layer expert at stonewalling? Why does a public outcry get ignored so often, without any palpable consequence?

 

Fortunately, this is the age of video! Nothing can be hidden. For instance: Go now to Youtube and search for “destruction for gold”. You’ll be shocked to view what Erastus Asare Donkor and his courageous JOY TV teams have uncovered – sometimes at the risk of their lives.

 

Look at the faces of the officials the President is addressing. Don’t they look like innocent, decent characters? Would you have believed that such a respectable-looking group as this, would collectively look on and allow what has been done to our rivers and streams (as documented in “Destruction for Gold” and other videos) to go on?

Would you not, looking at them, imagine that they are well-brought up Ghanaians, who have been taught by our traditions, that our ancestors revered and even “worshipped” rivers and streams, because by providing water to sustain our physical bodies, the rivers and streams thereby enabled us to sustain the spirits in us that make us sapient humans?

Go to Youtube again and find “Galamsey floods Kyebi” You will hear someone wailing in the film: “Kyebi ni o!…Kyebi” (This is Kyebi!”)

 

The person sounds as if he were saying, “This the Moon that has fallen down here!” For yes, what he is seeing – Kyebi, the well-chosen site that signifies all that is sacred in Akyem Abuakwa; Kyebi, the capital town whose inhabitants proudly boast, “Me yἑ Akyemkwaa a me nom Birem!”! [I am an Akyem indigene who drinks water from the Birem”!] Someone at Kyebi is now decrying the presence of the Birem River because it has turned some roads and compounds of the town into unwanted “tributaries”. Walls and bedrooms have been demolished, he moans.

Agyei! Kwasi Wusu- Akyem wↃ he o? [Where is Kwasi Wusu-Akyem, the Twi-language broadcasting pioneer who popularised the saying, Akyemkwaa a me nom Birem throughout Ghana
Birem is destroying Kyebi? And why not?

 

The natural course it has trodden for centuries; the flowing pathways left undisturbed for us because our wise ancestors had laid down rules about what could be done at the atifi (source area) and the anaafoↃ (lower part) respectively — have we not blocked them through galamsey operations?
Our ancestors decreed that no-one should cross the river on Tuesday, because that was the river’s “birth day”?

“Birth-day of a River”? I surely know that’s the product of a culture based on “superstition”?
Well, go and ask “ecologists” with PhD and D.Sc degrees. They will confirm to you that our ancestors knew (by whatever means!) that water-sources need occasional periods of “rest” from human pollution (such as weeding and throwing the rubbish into the river, for instance, or dirtying the water by disturbing the riverbed with human feet, whilst fishing, etc) and they decreed “a day of self-renewal for the river).

 

Oh, we of little wisdom! You take an excavator into a river that has been delicately cultivated for centuries, and you expect it not to react?

“Ao”! Kyebi ni o! Birem afa Kyebi! “[Ao, this is Kyebi” Birem has swallowed parts of Kyebi!”]
Yes, the TV footage testifies that our hypocrisy has been exposed.

You need to stop GALAMSEY, entirely, but, instead, you say “We’ll sanitise it and turn it into supervised community mining.”

Tweaaaa! [Phut!]
We claim to be a “Christian nation”! Well, the Bible says, “Whatsoever thou soweth, that shalt thou reap!” The video footage provides the evidence! Refute it if you can.”

Erastus Asare Donkor et al, “Well done! Continue like that!”