By Ghana’s riverside, a child once fetched clean water with a calabash and sang joyfully. Today, the same child, now grown, cannot even dip a toe in the same river without getting eczema. As for drinking? Unless they are planning to grow gills or glow in the dark, it is a health hazard.

Why? Because galamsey has turned our water into mercury soup and our forest into a moonscape.

Let us not sugarcoat evil. Let us not pour honey on poison and call it herbal tea. Galamsey is not mining. It is madness. It is not small-scale. It is large-scale lunacy.

Last week, Dr. Hannah Bissiw was nearly shot by gun-wielding galamsey militias while leading a task force in Bono East. Yes, a woman—risking her life with boots in the mud—while some state officials sip tea in air-conditioned cowardice.

And what is the solution proposed by the occupants of the Jubilee House? AI. Yes, Artificial Intelligence. Apparently, the very thing we can’t apply to ECG billing or NHIS cards will suddenly become our golden ticket to track galamsey. You know it’s bad when you need software to tell you your rivers are dead.

Let’s not get it twisted. Our problem isn’t intelligence; it is the lack of courage and conscience. Galamsey is enabled by a toxic cocktail of political godfathers, rogue chiefs, compromised police officers, and a judiciary that throws the book only at poor men holding shovels—not the rich men financing the bulldozers.

The Tree Is Dying, and So Are We...

The devastating health consequences of galamsey are not tales from folklore. Mercury and cyanide used in gold extraction have seeped into water sources—the same water used for drinking, cooking, bathing, and farming. The effect? Alarming spikes in kidney disease, skin ailments, respiratory problems, and neurological disorders.

Babies are being born with defects that look like they came from a science fiction film—a horror show of our own making.

Unborn children are now served mercury in the womb instead of mother’s love. Some will never know what it means to play in clean sand, or bathe in water without the fear of poisoning. As the elders say, “When the drumbeat changes, the dance must change.”

But here we are, still doing adowa while the music plays dirges.

Forests Are Not Just for Monkeys...

Our ecosystem is collapsing faster than a two-legged stool. Forests are cleared with reckless abandon; rivers, once full of fish, now look like something brewed in a witch’s pot.

Topsoil is being ripped apart, crops are failing, wildlife is displaced. Even the birds are migrating—yes, the canaries have flown the coal mine, and we’re still asking, “Is everything okay?”

If this canker is not uprooted like the stubborn weed it is, what should we expect?

Mass food insecurity. Perpetual water shortages. Full-blown climate chaos. A generation of sick citizens and stunted minds.

And, eventually, civil unrest—because when people have no land to farm, no clean water to drink, and no justice to hold onto, they begin to fight back.

“When the crocodile comes out of the river and tells you the fish is sick, believe it.”

Journalists like Erastus Asare Donkor have shown us, in raw footage, the extent of this devastation. And yet, the nation turns its eyes away, like a man who sees smoke from his kitchen but continues watching telenovelas.

Who Will Bell the Cat?

Let us not pretend that the political class is blameless. The NPP has galamsey backers. The NDC has galamsey sponsors. The chiefs, in many places, have traded ancestral lands for Land Cruisers and envelopes fat enough to give a hernia. And the communities? Many have remained silent, complicit, or bought.

My friends, this is no longer about the gold under the ground. It’s about the spine of those above it.

What Must Be Done?

• Declare illegal miners eco-terrorists and galamsey a treasonable offense

• Disarm and dismantle all galamsey militias with military precision

• Jail the real kingpins—not the poor souls with pickaxes

• Ban excavator imports unless by verified permit (200 arrive daily like it’s a Jumia flash sale!)

• Empower—not abandon—anti-galamsey units and whistleblowers

This is not a partisan matter. It is a question of whether Ghana wants to exist in 50 years. If you cut down a tree that gives you shade today, do not blame the sun tomorrow.

So let us rise. Let the chiefs stop issuing land like fliers. Let the politicians stop building mansions on the ruins of our rivers. Let the citizens stop pretending not to know the galamsey boys living next door.

Galamsey is treason. Declare it. Fight it. Or we will all drink poison together.

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The writer is a media executive, author, and sharp-eyed social commentator. His debut novel, Blood and Gold: The Rebellion of Sikakrom, now available on Amazon Kindle, explores power, rebellion, and the soul of a nation. When he’s not steering broadcast operations, he’s busy challenging conventions—often with satire, always with purpose.