Cindy Shiner in Obuasi, Ghana
JUST beyond the yellow “no trespassing” sign, a burly fellow who calls himself “Jangu-man” stood ankle-deep in chemical-laced black muck. He scooped some into a wooden gutter with a dented old army helmet and washed it, letting promising particles gather into a porous brown cloth.
Quicksand-like pits have claimed the lives of at least five men working in the moonscape around the Obuasi gold fields this year, and security forces have killed three and arrested 17 others. But Jangu- man, whose name means “wild one,” displayed the confidence of a giddy gambler with nothing left to lose.
Working on the run-off from soil already processed with cyanide and arsenic at Ghana’s leading industrial mine, Jangu-man is one of thousands of illegal gold miners who risk their lives to keep themselves fed.
The men gather around large-scale, licensed mining operations, living off what the big companies throw away or have not yet got to. Ghana’s Ashanti Goldfields Company, is the world’s 10th-biggest producer of gold, with its annual yield growing in the past decade from 200 ounces to nearly one million.
Ashanti’s expertise is being sought by Mali, Niger, Guinea, Ivory Coast and others that have watched Ghana’s status soar in international circles.
But fears are mounting over growing tension between illegal miners and mining companies in Ghana, as unemployed youths become more desperate for a piece of the wealth being extracted from around their villages.
Economic reforms inspired by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have helped boost foreign investment here, but have also spurred resentment among locals.
“There’s no doubt that gold mining is precipitating an increase in social tensions,” a Western diplomat said. “This is not a trickle-down type of prospecting … You see some fancy cars around town, nice houses, but the lower 40% of the population is certainly no better off than they were a generation ago.”
At least 1 000 illegal miners, known as galamsey, which means “sell it quick”, armed with blow guns, clubs and machetes, last month attacked Ashanti security men who tried to run them off a particularly rich site.
The miners stole about 50 000 chickens from the company’s poultry farm, ransacked buildings and injured three police officers.
“The whites, they are making all the money; the government must institute a law to employ the local inhabitants here,” said Blay Marshall Wellington, a teacher in Tarkwa, near Obuasi.
Mining companies in Ghana pay high compensation to communities displaced by mining. But the funds often end up lining the pockets of local chiefs, not in those of the most needy.
“It is only the galamsey that have saved the situation” in many communities,” said school principal EK Ayensu. “And now the mining companies are asking them to move away from the concessions.”