ALL THAT GLITTERS: LEGAL AND ILLEGAL GOLD MINING IN GHANA Chapter Two–Laying the groundwork
After South Africa, Ghana is the second largest gold producer in Africa, and over the last eight to nine years, thousands of people from China have streamed into Ghana, once famously known as the Gold Coast, in search of that yellow, glittery metal that human beings appear to go universally crazy over. Some estimate that Ghana has at least 1.75 billion ounces of gold in reserves. Many of the Chinese pouring into Ghana came from a particular area of their nation called Guangxi Province in Shanglin County, where an age-old tradition of gold mining exists and where local gold resources have dried up. Although Shanglin’s miners went looking for other gold-rich areas of China, e.g. Xinjiang and other provinces, the government came down hard on unscrupulous mining, and private operations were banned. Seeking other sources of gold outside China, the miners focused on Ghana’s rich resources, and behold, a mass exodus from China was born.
But Ghanaian law prohibits small-scale mining by non-citizens. For that reason alone, not to mention overstayed visas, the Chinese miners in Ghana have been engaged in illegal activity. The Guardian UK takes credit for bringing the story of massive illegal Chinese mining in Ghana to the forefront, revealing the appalling pits inflicted on the landscape in an accompanying video featuring Afua Hirsch. Other accounts emerged of Chinese miners being ambushed by Ghanaian armed robbers looking for cash and gold, Chinese miners using pump-action shotguns for protection, and at least two murders involving a Chinese man and a Ghanaian police officer.
Beginning May 2013, the Ghana government, via the military and special forces, launched a crackdown on the Chinese illegal immigrants and their operations. The picture was not pretty. Their cash and equipment were confiscated or looted, excavators and other machines were set alight, and the Chinese illegals were roughed up quite a bit and unceremoniously ejected from their mining camps and ultimately the country. In early June, 169 of them were arrested or detained. Ultimately the Chinese deportations from Ghana numbered in the thousands.
My Inspector Darko Dawson novels take social and/or economic issues in Ghana and make them the background for a murder or two (or three). This “gold-backed” turmoil in Ghana is tailor-made for Darko (and for me): conflict, social upheaval, greed, the search for riches in the midst of poverty, strong murder motives, and unlike the backdrop of prior novels Wife of the Gods and Children of the Street, real instances of distressing homicide. Having decided on that topic for the fourth Darko Dawson novel, Gold of the Fathers (tentative title), off I happily go to Ghana to research it, right? Well, not quite that simple. Before making a final determination about the trip, I had to research how I was going to do the research. It was important to make the right contacts–particularly with law enforcement, which was intimately involved with the Chinese debacle. Before I left for Ghana, I reached out to a good friend of mine, Frank, who is a detective at Accra’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID), a division of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), and has been of immeasurable assistance to me in the past.
THE CID BUILDING IN ACCRA
(Photo Kwei Quartey)
He pointed me in the right direction: First, I needed to get in touch with the director of GPS Public Affairs, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) C. Arthur. I wrote the DSP a letter about six weeks before going to Ghana, along with a signed copy of Wife of the Gods, explaining my mission and my wish to speak to the crime officer at Obuasi, the mining town to which I referred in the previous post, about the present status of illegal mining in the Obuasi area and beyond. The GPS uses a “unitary” system of command. Whereas in the States one would go directly to, say, the commander or public relations officer of the police department of a particular town or jurisdiction, in Ghana all control is centralized in Accra. The district police can do nothing without permission from Headquarters. (I have learned this the hard way in previous visits to Ghana.)
I arrived in Accra early September and wasted no time in seeking out DSP Arthur, whose office is in the Ghana Police Service Headquarters next door to the CID building. For reasons I’ve never figured out, security at CID is relaxed, while at the GPS building it is tight in comparison. For example, you must check in your mobile phone at the security post before entering the GPS building, or you will be in big trouble.
NEW CRIME SCENE VEHICLE WITH GHANA POLICE HQ IN THE BACKGROUND
(Photo Kwei Quartey)
Any anxieties I might have entertained about my reception by DSP Arthur were immediately allayed when I met him, as he was very affable and easygoing. He had received my letter and the novel and was very appreciative. An English major, Arthur confessed to me that he had begun writing a novel years ago but hadn’t completed it. I encouraged him not to give up! Regarding my research and the purpose of my visit, he gave me unqualified permission to visit with and talk to the crime officer in Obuasi. The crime officer, who was a good friend of Arthur’s, also used to share an office with Frank’s immediate superior, DSP Gove, with whom I’d established cordial relations on previous trips. These kinds of connections work especially well in Ghana, where personal relationships are often of greater value than formal policy and procedure.
I made another fortunate link before I left Accra to head north to the Ashanti Region. An author and professor at the University of Ghana Laura J. McGough, who did a review of Wife of the Gods in 2009 and is writing her own murder mystery (and also happens to be an awesome kick-boxer), put me in touch with acclaimed photographer Nii Obodai, who is collaborating with journalist Yiting Sun to tell the story of Chinese illegal mining in Ghana. Yiting has already written articles on the subject for the New York Times. I called up Nii Obodai and he said he and Yiting would be happy to talk to me. We met first thing in the morning at DeliFrance, a lovely cafe (in front of Esther’s Hotel), where you are as likely to hear Lebanese, German and French being spoken as you are to hear English and the Ghanaian languages, reflecting Accra’s cosmopolitan character.
DELIFRANCE CAFE
(Photo Samuel Mensah)
Nii and Yiting were very helpful in setting the scene for me, describing what they had seen over their travels in the mine-ravaged Ashanti Region. “Is it dangerous to visit these mining sites?” I asked, a trifle anxiously. “No,” Yiting told me, matter-of-factly. As I was about to discover, the image I had conjured up as a result of media reports of pitched gun battles between warring Chinese and Ghanaian people was wildly off the mark.
But it was the contact that Nii Obodai and Yiting in turn provided me that was to prove to be a godsend: Kwame, a taxi owner and machine operator who lives in the Obuasi area and works for AngloGold Ashanti, had been their guide to multiple mining sites, both deserted (by the Chinese) and operational. With Kwame’s savvy and extensive knowledge of the area, I was about to be treated to quite a bit of adventure.
NEXT: The pockmarked landscape–seeing the mines for myself.
