Style of media report on Chinese in galamsey worrisome

The stories I have been reading in the Ghanaian media trouble me because they are whipping up latent misconceptions of oriental people to justify current persecution of the Chinese in Ghana.

I am suggesting that Ghanaians should set an example for the rest of Africa by being exemplary in their handling of Chinese misbehaving in Ghanaian commerce. Kweku Baako is stoking prejudice against the Chinese.

Ghanaians should not repeat the methods the West used to reposition black people to justify subsequent slavery, apartheid and second class citizenship as it currently exists in Europe and the Americas. Being a pan-Africanist, Kweku Baako has led us to believe one of the meanings of pan-Africanism is treating people with maximum equality, respect and justice.

Even if the alleged behaviour of the Chinese woman blackmailing weak and spineless Ghanaian politicians and civil servants is true, the media has a responsibility to present the facts without stirring popular discontent against an ethnic group.

The media presentation of the story has focused on winding up its audience. The Ghanaian public is being manipulated into a frenzy by the local media. Care must be taken by the Ghanaian media to keep its output informative and above reproach to remain a source of credible information.

Exploiting weak Ghanaians and other institutions

The behaviour of the Chinese is aimed at exploration of the land to identify and extract mineral resources. They are driven by the profit motive and will exploit weak Ghanaian politicians and institutions to operate with as little restriction as possible to make their operations profitable.

The Chinese are not to blame for the methods they are employing to make their operations profitable. They are exploiting the weakness they perceive in the Ghanaian social, cultural and political environment to achieve their objective of making profit. The Chinese are behaving like the capitalists before them have done in Ghana since they arrived on our shores. Our forefathers failed to strike the correct business relationship with the Europeans. Today, the Ghanaian media is goading and provoking even subtly inciting Ghanaians to adopt an authoritarian posture towards the Chinese. The current demeanor of the Ghanaian media is unbecoming of the spirit of collaboration and cooperation existing between Ghana and China.

Furthermore, the media run the risk of undermining what should be the deepening and continued development of equitable business relations between Ghana and China. It is in the mutual interest and long-term survival of Ghana and the Republic of China to have excellent social and economic relations.

Instead, the Ghanaian media have turned their attention to the immigrant Chinese who are the weak link in their estimation of the cause of the degradation of the Ghanaian environment through galamsey.


The Densu River example

Ghanaian and foreign establishments cut the subaha trees that lined the course of the Densu River that flows through the centre of Accra leading to silting. Central and local government officials turned a blind eye to the activities of these establishments that have wrecked the environment along the course of this important river. The same local and central government officials also turned a blind eye to the illegal settlements that became established along the Densu River.

The illegal settlements pour liquid and solid waste into the Densu River daily. Today, the Densu River is an ecological disaster zone. The media has never subjected the establishments, central and local government officials to intense scrutiny over the destruction of the ecosystem of the entire course of the Densu River. The establishments that pour poisonous waste into the Densu River and the central and local government officials and the politicians responsible for the development of illegal settlements are responsible for the current state of the Densu River.

The Ghanaian politician and central and local government authorities have never been taken to task by the Ghanaian media using sensational and emotionally charged reporting the Chinese immigrant miners are being subjected to in the print and electronic media in Ghana. The politician and the local and central government officials who have made the Densu River what it is today are the establishment in Ghanaian society.  The same Ghanaian politician and central and local government officials are responsible through their collusion with Ghanaian natives and the newly arrived Chinese for what galamsey is today. The Ghanaian politician and their counterparts in central and local government in the Ghanaian social context are strong in relation to the immigrant Chinese and their backers in Ghana who by comparison are a vulnerable minority.

The Chinese in Ghana in comparison to the power of the Ghanaian establishment is a weak minority and it is, therefore, unfair and even unethical of the Ghanaian media to subject them to biased reporting in the media.

The media have remained largely silent about the environmental disaster, that is the Densu River. The environmental disaster that engulfs the Densu River is of greater magnitude compared to the current state of the Pra River and its environs.

The plight of the environment and of the livelihoods of farmers and even the dispossessed Ghanaians who must resort to illegal and dangerous mining to eke out an existence is a very important story. The angle the Ghanaian media have chosen to present the story of galamsey in Ghana raises the question of whose side the Ghanaian media is on and whose interests the Ghanaian media is representing in choosing the style and perspective to present a story of exploitation of ordinary Ghanaians and ordinary Chinese and the story of the extraction of a strategic natural resource with immense national and international significance and implications.

The Ghanaian media has certainly shown itself to be indifferent to the exploited Chinese and Ghanaian labour who risk their lives sinking unstable mining shafts. Even the Ghanaian media's poke at the weak end of the Ghanaian establishment it purports is responsible for the scale of the tragedy unfolding in the strip running between Axim and Gambaga known to contain gold is tame compared to its focus on the tabloid and sensational end of the story.

Quite simply, for the most part, ordinary Ghanaians are not the beneficiaries of the work the Ghanaian media is doing to cover the galamsey story and its accompanying environmental disaster. Ordinary Ghanaians are interested in freedom and justice for ordinary people and the collective wellbeing of ordinary people throughout Africa and the world. The Ghanaian media is known to have the journalistic capacity to develop a story to the benefit of the society it serves as opposed to narrow commercial interests. Now is the time for the Ghanaian media to prove it shares the same values and objectives as ordinary people.

Protecting the interest of the ordinary Ghanaian

A key mission of the Ghanaian state is to realise the pan African reality. Our government in Ghana and the media commission have a responsibility to ensure our media helps the Ghanaian state to realise the values Pan Africanists have stood for since the concept was first articulated. These values include the promotion of a multi-cultural society and an accompanying intolerance for all forms of discrimination.

Most of the media stories about the Chinese and galamsey are racist, discriminating and prejudiced. Galamsey and the destruction of the environmental on a national scale points more to the weakness and failures of the Ghanaian political establishment and its collusion with the civil service. The alliance between the Ghanaian political establishment and the civil service has failed to protect and promote the interests of ordinary Ghanaians.

The access of Ghanaian politicians and central and local government officials to the Ghanaian tax payer’s money cements the alliance between politicians and the civil servants at central and local government and it is this alliance that drives galamsey. This is the story the media is failing to tell Ghanaians. Selling stories of sexual peccadilloes is missing the point unless it reveals the network of collusion among state and private actors to appropriate the revenues that rightfully belong to the Ghanaian taxpayer.

Writer’s e--mail: festus.bediako.sarpong@gmail.com