The Gloom behind the Glitter of Ghana Mining

the gloom behind the glitter of ghana mining

community rights and the tarkwa experience

allan g. lassey , third world network africa

Developing countries are pursuing direct foreign investment with growing zeal. Over the past ten years, more than forty African countries have made sweeping reforms to their mineral sector investment codes, relaxing investment laws and policies to attract direct investment from foreign miners. Ghana's mining sector is trumpeted as the nation's largest foreign exchange earner, contributing about 60 percent of total annual foreign exchange earnings, and employing five percent of the country's labour force. But there is another, gloomier, side to this glittering tale. The continuous growth of this sector has brought enduring suffering, human rights violations, humiliation and massive impoverishment to the people of Ghana.

town personifies ghana mining
The town of Tarkwa is emblematic of this experience. This Ghanaian gold mining town is surrounded by the highest number of mining companies in sub-Saharan Africa, if not the world. Mining concessions occupy 70 percent of Tarkwa's total municipal land area, to the detriment of the local population's livelihood. Tarkwa hosts about eight mining companies, including the country's only bauxite and manganese mines.

environment under assault

On 16 June 1996, after days of torrential rains, the embankment of a solution pond at the Tarkwa mine of Teberebie Goldfields Limited collapsed, releasing a poisonous torrent of cyanide and other harmful chemicals into a river upon which more than nine communities depended for drinking, domestic and agricultural use. As a result, more than fifty acres of farmland was turned into a wasteland of scorched plants. Attempts to re-cultivate the land proved futile due to toxins in the soil. Several persons who came into contact with the water sustained various degrees of injuries. The river's aquatic life was also extinguished.

On 5 June 1999, a school boy lost his life when he fell into an uncovered pit dug by Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) at Ayanfuri near Tarkwa. Unprotected pits like this, which often fill with water and become death traps, are common in many mine concessions.

The requirement that mining companies produce Environmental Impact Assessments is now widely accepted, and the integration of social reporting into this process is gaining support, along with the need to audit and monitor ongoing operations. These are now requirements of all World Bank projects. However, the reality is that people in communities like Tarkwa, whose lives are affected by the extractive sector, have experienced even worse suffering than in the "bad old days" of mining. Injury to indigenous peoples is escalating, as is their pursuit of compensation from mining companies after situations go unpredictably wrong.

human rights violated
The powerful transnational mining companies that operate with minimal restraints in Ghana have remodelled themselves as ideal corporate citizens and arbiters of human rights, which operate on the cutting edge of environmentally-responsible mining practice.

In August 1997, Nkwatakrom, a farming village of 45 houses near Tarkwa, was completely demolished by
policemen and a group of thugs allegedly hired by Ghana Australia Goldfields Limited, now a subsidiary of AGC. Terrified by the demolition, women and children took refuge in the bush. A sleeping two-year-old child was buried alive during the demolition, but was later saved when the raiders retreated. Personal effects of the villagers were also looted. The immediate cause of the raid was the community's complaint about an offensive odour from the river, the waters of which they depended upon for drinking. The odour was caused by human excreta discharged by the mining company into the river.

In contrast to their well-manicured images, Ghana's are among the most criticized and most confronted mining companies operating anywhere on the earth's surface. They are clearly complicit in human rights violations, they continue to subvert Ghanaians' self-determination, and they redefine human rights and environmental criteria in their own way.

In May 1998, Atuabo, a farming community near Tarkwa was demolished to make way for surface mining. A
team of armed soldiers and policemen surrounded the entire village at dawn and jolted residents out of their sleep. Before they could register any protest, they were all bundled into waiting vehicles with their belongings and dumped at a new settlement of one-room houses, one house per family irrespective of the family's size. The local people have also been stopped from carrying out any agricultural activity on their farmlands -- their main source of livelihood. They are now threatened with starvation and impoverishment.

Ghana's constitution guarantees fundamental human rights such as the right to life, which entails the
right to enjoy a quality of life devoid of human activities that have the potential to mar or reduce that quality of life or deny one's life altogether. It guarantees respect for human dignity, and the right to own property.

But to what extent are human rights enjoyed by the people in communities that are impacted by mining
activities?

resistance
On 29 April 1998, two community members of Atuabo (in Tarkwa) who served on a resettlement committee were arbitrarily arrested by security personnel. Under orders of the regional minister, they were put before a community tribunal for expressing views about resettlement issues that diverged with the interests of Goldfields Ghana Limited. These two community members were considered an impediment to attracting foreign direct investment.

It is widely established that there has been a de facto or de jure surrendering -- or calculated erosion -- of governments' responsibilities to protect public interest, especially in developing nations. This began with World Bank/International Monetary Fund structural adjustments, through economic globalization, and the relaxation of mineral sector policies of entire mineral-based economies. Against this background of eroded regulation, Ghanaian communities, particularly in Tarkwa, nonetheless employ a variety of forms of resistance to the human rights abuses suffered through mining.

On 13 December 1999, a combined force of armed soldiers and police went on a rampage in a community near Tarkwa. This attack was in retribution for a demonstration community members had made against South Africa-based Gold Fields Ghana Limited for disrupting people's livelihoods. This armed force shot and wounded nine people, arrested anybody they found, and destroyed property. Nobody was spared; the elderly, women and the sick alike were subjected to severe beatings.

Community responses to corporate violations of human rights in Ghana run the gamut from street demonstrations involving chiefs, to violent clashes, to a stack of court cases lodged over the past six years.

demonstrations
On 7 November 1996, forty-two divisional chiefs of the Tarkwa traditional area embarked on a demonstration to protest surface mining in the area. Their forests are being degraded at an alarming rate, turning former evergreen glades into grasslands pocked with huge craters. The chiefs called for a moratorium on the opening of new mines, and the closure of irresponsibly-run mines in the Tarkwa traditional area.

court actions
The extreme poverty in communities affected by mining means that courts are not a viable means of redress for most. Nonetheless, a small number of successful cases exist. For example, attempts by Goldfields Ghana Limited to thwart demands for compensation by two Tarkwa communities backfired when a supreme court threw out the motion. Inhabitants of the communities had sued the mining company for forceful ejection and destruction of their farmlands and property. The court submitted that the mining company had exhausted all procedures for negotiations with the two communities and ordered the company to pay compensation.

negotiation
Compensation for affected houses, farms and crops has always been a negotiation issue between communities and mining companies. Although some avenue for negotiation exists, communities always suffer intimidation and harassment from mining companies. Currently, Normandy Gold Ghana's planned mine in Kenyasi has been stalled pending the outcome of negotiations between affected communities and the mining company.

role of state agencies
Wherever mining and social conflict have occurred, state agencies have shirked their responsibility to protect people's rights and interests. Communities' critical attitude toward state agencies on these issues is unsurprising, and they often cannot hide their resentment towards state agencies.

"They described the entire process of negotiations and subsequent relocation exercises as executed in an atmosphere of mistrust between the communities on one hand and the mining companies and government agencies including national security agencies on the other hand. The communities strongly believe that deliberate, heinous, and collaborative machinations were developed by the latter agencies designed to harass, frustrate and intimidate affected communities into accepting packages woefully unsatisfactory to them." (Akabzaa, 2000)

Furthermore, the complete lack of coordination between the various state agencies involved in social, economic and environmental administration in Ghana gives mining companies even more room to exploit Ghanaians.

It is too soon and too simplistic to characterize this struggle as one primarily between the local people and the mining companies. One must consider the wider picture of the state's role toward its own people.

confronting the “three d's”
Human rights violations in the extractive sector include the deprivation of land, the degradation of life-sustaining resources, and the denial of community self-determination. It is vital for us to confront the threat posed by this deprivation, degradation and denial – the “three d's”.

Unfortunately, neither the industry's leading pundits nor international agencies are concerned with these trends. Instead they now invite us to entertain their new agenda, "stakeholder participation" aimed at practicing something called “sustainable mining.” This oxymoron of a concept is highly alarming when it comes to human rights in Ghana's mining sector.

It is time you and I began to reflect on existing policies, and to fashion them in a manner that takes account of the people's concerns.