When gold and diamonds were first discovered in South Afri­ca, many men lost interest in sex. The discovery, therefore, caused marital problems the world over. Wives thought their dear husbands had gotten impotent and perhaps needed herbal treatment – AK 47 bitters. In fact, they were mistaken. Their husbands were only preoccu­pied with dreaming about gold and just couldn’t get it up to fulfill their marital obligations.

When the gold and diamond sen­sation got blown out of proportion, happily-married men either divorced their wives or simply left them and headed for South Africa to “do galam­sey.” It was also a boom for some wives.

Hot-headed, sexy, firm buttocks, slim waisted, shinny-lipped wives left their husbands gaping in wonder as they floated to the Rand to hawk their beautiful bodies for gold money. Some became strip-teasers and belly danc­ers to entertain tired gold diggers and made a fortune therefrom. Gold had brought a good measure of madness to the world

The global insanity became so in­fectious that gainfully employed folks vacated post and were last seen in dirty garb with shovels and pans dig­ging gold. Some pastors and catechists were even infected with the virus of the golden madness.

They promptly told the Holy Spirit to hold on “small”. They threw off the cassock, shoved the Holy Bible aside and travelled thousands of miles to dig diamonds. Man shall not subsist only on the word of God. Moreover, when man is bellyful his chances of making it to heaven are high. The reason is that the distance between a man’s stomach and the gates of heaven is automatically reduced once his belly is well-filled with good food and wine.

The gold rush also brought ready employment to armed robbers. They quickly procured arms and ammo and danced joyfully to the land of the Afri­kaners, not to dig for gold, but to rob successful miners of their fortune. It brought about violence and a security problem. The miners were compelled to arm themselves and people died through violence while others were maimed.

The situation was characterised by mayhem and some returned home wealthy, others poorer than they had been. It was a whole confusion of comedy and tragedy, successes and failures, joy and sorrow. That is what gold begets.

Go to Obuasi and witness what gold can do to a human being. Illegal gold diggers are prepared to die in defence of their notoriety and deter­mination to prosper from minerals that do not belong to them. They are armed to the teeth and would readily cause harm if antagonised.

Some have died while digging for gold or through mercury or cyanide poisoning. When workers of Ashanti Goldfields blast surface rock and wait for the dust to settle, these galamsey men rush in there to scoop out earth which they are not supposed to be doing because of the health risks and because it is unlawful.

Galamsey operators have clashed with police and security men of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (AGC) more than once this year alone. In a recent offense, the operators were al­leged to have destroyed AGC property, torched housing facilities, and stole 58,000 birds from the corporation’s poultry unit, among other things.

Surely, the rogues are selling some of the birds cheaply under half the price, and the rest are certainly being organised into light soup to clear malaria. Of course, some of the meat would end up roasted, fried or toast­ed and eaten with ground pepper and akpeteshie if not Extra ‘Hewale.’

This is the comedy of the pala­ver. The looming tragedy is that the galamsey men are said to be getting ready to avenge the death of three of their colleagues who were killed in the confrontation. Apparently, they are not content with the chicken fes­tival and want to cause havoc.

The problem with those who mine gold is that they are die-hards – Yente gyae! Most of them have seen the bitterness of life, have suffered hunger, disease and deprivation. They find galamsey as the golden way out. It is their saviour, their messiah. If they would meet death in the course of finding a means to survive, they would welcome it. And if they could be killed, then they must also kill. That sums up the mentality of these operators.

I have a feeling that it would be better for the authorities to deal pru­dently with the matter while beefing up security in the area. In the first place, to deprive them completely of their operations without offering them any alternatives would mean turning them loose to become armed robbers since they are armed, anyway. We have enough armed robbers in the system. We don’t want new entrants.

What should be done is that their activities should be regulated rather than obliterated. A way should be found to meet their representatives to iron out the growing differences. And the following must be considered.

That they cannot operate without licence; they should be confined to specific areas of operation so as to save the environment from degrada­tion; should renounce violence and the celebration of chicken festivals; should regulate the activities of their members; should not encroach upon AGC property and desist from lawless­ness of all kinds, especially stealing and be prepared to be tried and jailed if they breach the peace or the law.

The aim is not to encourage galamsey but to regulate it so that it becomes legal and employment gen­erating without it become a nuisance to society.

As one AGC official told me re­cently, the activities of the galamsey operators do not adversely affect the corporation except when the opera­tors become lawless, encroach and steal. That is where they become undesirable.

It is unfortunate that AGC does not arm their security men well enough to deal with lawless operators. Anyhow, we hope the situation would be well-thought-out so that calm can return to the Obuasi area.

Already, the prostitutes in the area are feeling uneasy. When there is a stir, business goes down. Theirs is a matter of the heart and of the thigh. That’s a cool matter and they are praying hard that the matter should be resolved at a high level. Because the higher you go, the cooler it be­comes!