Finally, finally, it seems that everybody is speaking. Ghana is faced with the very real potential of facing
water shortages, and an unprecedented rate of environmental destruction, and everybody is suddenly
speaking.
Over the past ten days, I have seen press statements from work groups, religious groups, youth groups,
media organizations and virtually anybody and everybody with a platform, speaking against illegal
mining; what we have termed ‘galamsey’ in Ghana.
The outrage is real. Many, once pristine water bodies, flowing with life, flora and fauna, have been
destroyed by a gold rush similar to what was seen in the United States, nearly two hundred years ago.
Many Ghanaians have been outraged by the constant pictures, news and stories about destroyed rivers,
forests and agricultural lands.
And the question many are asking is; how did we get here?
The answer, of course, is simple; Ghana has the misfortune of being led, over the past two decades, by a
series of weak men, men who are unable to take hard and necessary decisions. The latest of these men
is the current president, who seems to be fonder of rhetoric as against putting in place concrete plan
and actions to combat every problem faced or likely to be faced by our society.
For many weeks now, I have not had water through my taps. My family has to live through the indignity
of rushing out with pans and buckets to fetch rain water when it rains, because the taps are not
working.
How did we get here?
Many years ago, I read somewhere that international cocoa cartels might blacklist Ghana’s cocoa, still
the country’s most significant foreign exchange earner, if the crop was ever found to be contaminated
by substances like mercury.
As I write, all our water bodies in all the cocoa growing areas have been destroyed; many believe that
they have been heavily polluted by mercury and other substances. The economic effect of this
destruction would be felt by the country for decades to come, if not centuries.
How did we get here?
Over time, and one day in the future, I have no doubt at all that there would be a need to hold some
type of inquiry as to how we arrived at such a sorry impasse in a matter that should have been simplicity
itself.
You see, it is the law in Ghana that rivers are water bodies, and the approaches to them cannot be
destroyed, even for agricultural purposes.
Similar laws are there to protect forests and wildlife. Right at the inception of the illegal mining
infestation, Ghana should have invoked these laws, operationalized them, and ensured that all those
breaking such laws face the stiffest punishment. But we sat on our hands, formed committee after
committee, and now, even children are involved in the cancerous canker.
The other day, I saw a video of some children, between five to nine years old, knee deep in a water
body, looking for gold at the time they should have been in school. Babies in rivers, looking for gold.
Shocking indeed. We have no reason to call ourselves a civilized country, because if we can allow things
to slide to this level, then we are not civilized.
If we allow water, the very thing that keeps us alive, to be destroyed to this level, then we cannot, by
any stretch of the imagination, be described as a thinking people.
We should have spoken up louder, years ago!
(This article was first published under the column Periscope Depth on Monday, 16 th September, 2024).
