A nation at war with itself

All those who have been excusing galamsey on the flimsy grounds of one rationalisation or the other – for instance, that the perpetrators of the wanton national destruction taking place in our country, is providing “work” for the unemployed, especially the youth – have been brought face to face with a sad reality: the barbaric murder of Captain Maxwell Mahama at Denkyira-Obuasi on 29th May 2017, is not altogether unconnected with galamsey.

When I saw the video of the lynching, I could not believe my eyes. Ghana 2017?

The atrocity was committed in broad daylight. It took place in an atmosphere of calculated callousness, with the rock throwers being cheered on. It was as if some agents provocateurs had incited the atrocity deliberately to send a defiant message to the government of President Akufo-Addo.

The act raises certain questions:

• Who recorded the atrocity?

• How was he/she able to upload it onto the internet so fast?

• What was the motive in posting it; was it merely to inform the public, or to trigger a reaction against the elected government?

I don't buy the rationalisation offered in official accounts that the murderers mistook the lone figure they saw on the road, for an ‘armed robber’.

An ‘armed robber’ who carries out his dastardly business on foot? How would this lone “armed robber” cart away his ‘spoils’ unaided, without transport?

The more likely story is that someone deliberately targeted Captain Maxwell Mahama. If so, who was that person? Is it possible that person wanted to convey a message to the government, namely: “You think you can bring the army to stop us? Tweaaaa, we can't be stopped! Da! If you bring in the army, we shall show the soldiers the stuff we are made of.”

Yes, the galamseyers have tasted ‘easy gold’ and they love the taste. Like a drug, it has taken hold of their minds, and they won't ‘go cold turkey’ on it, even if they wanted to.

Now, such a situation can create a series of very messy unexpected consequences. One is that it may seem to those charged with containing the situation in terms of law and order – whether they be the military or the police – like a “little local difficulty” which can be easily coaxed back to normality.

For instance – in hindsight, and I repeat in hindsight – if a professionally competent appreciation of the true situation at Denkyira-Obuasi and its environs had been made before the soldiers were sent there, the tragedy might have been avoided.

In my view – and I am the first to admit that I am no military expert – if it had been determined that the situation there posed a threat amounting, potentially, to insurgency dimensions, intelligence officers (whether from Defence Intelligence or the Bureau of National Investigations) would have had to be sent there to ‘case the joint’ or ‘recce’ [reconnoitre] the place before the main body of the detachment was sent.

Had research by intelligence established that there were pockets of pro-galamsey elements that were capable of causing a riot or disturbance to obstruct legitimate military operations, a warning could have been included in the rules of engagement given to the detachment, to beware of possible ambushes.

But because the anti-galamsey operations have not yet been put on a “war-footing”, such a warning might not have been issued.

Yet the reaction the detachment seems to have evoked is commensurate with what can be expected in a properly-defined “counter-insurgency” theatre of operations.

I think the galamseyers are taking their opposition to government efforts to contain their devastation of the land and its water-sources, very very seriously.

They believe they can see the government vacillating, if not pussy-footing with regard to its yet-to-be-announced anti-galamsey programme (which has taken too long to be broadcasted, anyway!) The galamseyers, unlike the government, appear to be fully prepared to go “full ball” in combating the government's feeble efforts at halting their enterprise of devastating the land and its water sources. They want to show the law enforcement agencies a thing or two.

They, in fact, appear to have been professional enough, in the psychological warfare arena, to have studied the movements of the military detachment and picked on an individual within it for heinous assassination, whose murder would capture the attention of the whole nation, and probably cause embarrassment to the government.

Embarrassment?

Yes, what was the NDC Secretary-General Asiedu Nketia's empty-headed statement, calling for President Akufo-Addo's resignation, in aid of? Was it not political embarrassment? Is Akufo-Addo a military general? Why should he carry the can if a military operation is undermined by its own internal vulnerabilities? Asiedu Nketia is too cowardly to direct criticism at the CDS or his army colleagues, so he chooses a civilian President to blame for a purely military failure. He wants to create bad blood between the government and its armed forces.

So Nketia's alleged boss, ex-President John Mahama, on the other hand, does urge people not to politicise the murder. Big deal. But is it at all plausible that Asiedu Nketia did NOT consult the ex-President before diving into such stinking waters to spread the odour of political self-seeking to the possible reaping of political benefit from the utter misery of a family that had endured such an unexpected and gruesome loss?

However asinine as it was, Asiedu Nketia's behaviour is but characteristic of the no-holds-barred mentality of indecency that has struck Ghana in recent years. A man is alleged to have stolen a mere mobile phone in Kumasi and he is lynched without much ado! The newspapers, of course, gladly participate in the lynching – vicariously – by pruriently displaying a gory photograph of the dead man's corpse in their pages. They are punishing him in death, but are they aware of the dictum that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction?

‘Witches’ are regularly burnt alive. When a case involving such a burning – like that of the late Madam Amma Hemma that occurred some years ago – goes to court, we hear nothing of it, after the initial hullabaloo, even though some journalists continually call on the police to tell the nation what has happened to the alleged murderers.

A man who calls himself a prophet kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach to take out an ‘evil spirit’ that he claims is inhabiting the body of the unborn baby. A video of the incident act goes viral. But the matter is treated as a private affair and no-one does anything punitive to the prophet. So he fears no reprisals when he sadistically whips two youngsters for ‘having had sex with each other’.

Meanwhile, millions of Ghanaians flock to churches every Sunday to show the world what a Christian society Ghana is.

I am sorry but we must now accept that we live in a fool's paradise. We are, in fact, largely a wicked, greedy, self-centred lot.

And our hypocrisy has grown in such exponential terms that we have brought it wantonly from the private to the national arena.

Politicians elected to serve the public interest do galamsey on the quiet, to make money. So do local traditional ‘leaders’.

Mining inspectors, environmental officers and law enforcement agents charged with the sacred duty of protecting our forests, food farms and water-bodies, rather facilitate the operations of the galamsey bastards.

The Minerals Commission established to regulate mining operations, does not know the law in its own field and closes its eyes to galamsey, believing that it is legal “small-scale mining”. Whereas it is the law, in black and white, that no mining licence is legal unless Parliament has ratified it.

The decent citizens among us cry foul and beg their negligent fellow citizens to cease and desist from such acts of naked self-destruction. But their cries fall on deaf ears.

Which only goes to show that we are – indeed – a nation at war with itself.

The next step, unless we are very careful and wise, will be utter, national, collective suicide.