Joy News television deserves the highest praise for continuing its campaign to save Ghana’s rivers and streams, as well as her food and cocoa farms, from the wanton destruction being wrought against them by galamseyers.
No sane Ghanaian can quite understand why, despite serious condemnation by members of the Government as well as by our traditional rulers, reinforced by the media, our water keeps turning muddy in colour.
The sheer ugly sight of the earth that is dug from riverbanks and farms; the dangers that lurk beneath the deep, muddy craters left by the powerful earthmovers, bulldozers and excavators– one look is enough to make a grown man break into tears. Are these people Ghanaians? Have they never dived into a pool shaded by bamboo groves, in the heat of the day, to enjoy a swim? How can anyone whose childhood memories contain such ecstatic moments, conceive of dredging a river or stream with an excavator? It is an unanswerable question.
Thank God Erastus Asare Donkor and his team, with the support of Joy News, have not allowed their anger at the destruction to be lightened by the insensitivity to criticism and general unconcern exhibited by those in political and bureaucratic authority, who are charged with ending the destruction, once and for all.
The afternoon of Monday, December 4, 2023, saw JoyNews embarking on another publicity campaign to draw attention to its coverage of the ravages being caused to our environment by our own fellow citizens. This time, they were outdooring their latest film, Destruction for Gold (fronted as usual by the inimitable Erastus Asare Donkor (winner of the GJA’s “Ghana Journalist of The Year and other awards) at the Labadi Beach Hotel, in Accra.
The film (which can be viewed on Youtube at: https://youtu. be/jTh2soOnmAw provides the usual factual, unsentimental commentary by Erastus Asare Donkor. Mr Donkor is highly persuasive as a reporter: he can obtain the true opinions of illiterate women eking out as living in the countryside, as well as professional scientific assessments by University academics. It is a lesson to hear directly from the mouths of scientists how foetuses are being born in the riverside communities that are badly deformed (some born without limbs or vital organs).
What are those scientists to think of the community that gave them birth? There is no-one else to blame but ourselves. Indeed: this is not a calamity caused by foreign exploiters of the minerals of a developing country. The mercury, cyanide and other dangerous chemicals used to “wash” gold into our water bodies, is bought and utilised by Ghanaian galamseyers. And we let them do it, because we value gold more than lives.
We were not always like that, you know? I remember that as a child, we used to hear the dawuro (gonggong) being beaten at festival times and other auspicious occasions like this:
Kon-kon! Kon-kon:
Omanfoc wc hc?
Nanahen [The Chief] se menka
Nkyer3 mo s3,
Yesu Amanehunu/Buronya/ afahy3 a 33ba yi,
Y3ate s3 awudifoc,
Atetenkorona,
Ni akodimmaa
Ab3tet3 enwiram ha
A y33p3 amanfoc adi wcn bcne,
Enti mmcfra 33kc asuo a,
Wcne mpanimfoc nkc.
Mpanimfoc 33kc afuom a
Wcnkc no mmienu mmienu;
Na obiaa nhw3 ne ho yie!
Kon-kon!-kon-kon!-konkon!
(Kon-kon!
Nana The Chief wants all his townspeople
To be informed that
As the Easter/Christmas/or other
Festival time approaches,
Our forests and the paths to our farms
Have been invaded by would-be murderers who conceal themselves;
There are also cult worshippers who kill children and tear out their hearts;
Highwaymen and rapists are also rampant;
Therefore children should only go to fetch water in large groups;
Farmers too should congregate and go to farm together;
Everyone should be extremely careful and observe normal safety rules.]
That would be the “general” public announcement. Shortly after it had been broadcast by the gonggong, and depending on how serious the situation was deemed to be, the DRUMS of the ASAFO would also be beaten in the palace. These are war drums, and every village or town is supposed to possess a set of them. ONCE THEY ARE BEATEN, EVERY ADULT MALE MUST MAKE HIS WAY TO THE CHIEF’S PALACE IMMEDIATELY. (By adult male, it is meant that only native-born adult males should go to the palace.
At the palace, each “elder” or head of a family would sit with the members of his family. There could be up to 10 families, each of which would produce at least 10 men. They would engage in war dances (to activate their morale) and then discuss strategies for dealing with the “emergency” that had caused the drums to be played to summon them, after the gonggong had been beaten
From then on, the men would arm themselves with their cutlasses and guns (usually only hunters had guns). Then they would go into the bushes, beating their drums and yelling war slogans, such as “YENIM KO OOOO, YENNIM ADWANE OOOOO! AYEEEEIII!”
[‘WE ONLY KNOW HOW TO FIGHT, NOT HOW TO RUN HEYYYYYY!!]
We have this invincible form of self-defence, and yet we are sitting down to allow a group of malefactors to ruin our rivers and
streams and to jeopardise our farming efforts. We looked to the Government to protect us from the galamsey malefactors.
The Government’s Task Forces have not been able to stop them, mainly because our social system has been corrupted to the core by the cohorts of selfish political and government officialdom on whom we have been relying for salvation.
It is now the duty of every community to set up its own self-defence system. Based on well-tried traditional strategies.
Such as that which stopped in its tracks, the Gold Coast colonial government’s attempt to cut out diseased cocoa trees by force, without paying compensation to the farmers whose cocoa farms had been affected by – the “Swollen Shoot” disease!
BY CAMERON DUODU
