When ‘Ramsar’ becomes a farce
The recent images and clips of various people having their houses pulled down by state agents at the Sakumono Ramsar Site as they wail in despair make grim viewing, and whatever one’s views it is hard not to be impacted by the emotional scenes as people see their lifelong investments come crashing.
The particular case of an elderly gentleman believed to be in his 70s and clearly distraught as his property came crashing down was particularly sad.
At his age, how does he rebuild the property and his life, when apparently all his pension was poured into the property?
Familiar pattern
The truth though is that this is an all-too-familiar, almost boring trend.
A citizen acts in clear contravention of the law and builds on restricted land or without the appropriate building permits, sets up a shop where it is not supposed to be and without legal permission, or a market or bus station sprouts up gradually.
These things do not happen overnight and they take place in clear view of agents of the state who are paid with taxpayer’ money to ensure that they do not happen in the first place.
Building a house is not the same as baking bread in the privacy of one’s kitchen away from prying eyes.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, and like a tiger woken up from its self-induced stupor, the state roars into action, pulls out the statute books, dusts them down and then goes to town to enforce ‘discipline’, with bulldozers, gun-toting military persons and cameras in tow.
Various officials fill our TV screens, waxing lyrical and pandering to the cameras over the mess that it has allowed to build up in the first place.
Almost as if by magic, grim-faced city task force personnel spring into action, as if they just noticed illegal selling on the pavements or illegal shops, chasing frightened traders and bundling their wares onto the back of trucks. Of course they are back soon when the cameras go away.
Citizens are then divided, some praising the state, urging discipline and condemning the law-breakers, whilst others shed tears for those whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed.
We argue endlessly. Then in a few weeks we latch unto some other story and move on.
We seem to love quite a good circus whirlwind and keep coming back for more without much headway, whether it is on city floods, market fires, chasing pavement traders, collapsing buildings, availability of hospital beds or demolition of illegal structures, among many others.
We just love to talk.
No excuses
I do not celebrate the lawbreakers, but I do not whip up outrage from a high and mighty horse and dish out condemnation.
This is not in any way to excuse those who deliberately, and sometimes through a clandestine brown envelope or political connections, managed to secure land and permits for building purposes where there are clear restrictions enshrined in law and they knew or ought to have known.
I do not seek to legitimise or give succour to those who trade on pavements in open violation of the law, or who set up container shops and plant them where they please.
But as the saying goes, ‘it takes two to tango’, and I would rather direct my ire at those who are paid to gatekeep our streets and other spaces.
I believe state officials have a higher calling and a stronger duty both legally and morally, to ensure that what is right is done.
After all, it is impossible to bribe a person who does not want to be bribed and who rejects same.
As a general rule, citizens will try as much as they can to get away with as much as possible when it comes to rules.
That is human nature everywhere.
What sets societies apart is the ability of a state to create and maintain a strong enforcement culture that pushes back against citizens seeking to cross clear red lines by any means necessary, including attempts to pay one’s way through.
Equitable approach
Whilst it is heart-wrenching to watch people’s lives and livelihoods crumble before their very eyes, the country cannot ride on a tide of emotions if we want to make progress.
To quote the immediate past Chief Justice, ‘the law is the law’.
If a particular site cannot be built upon, then what exists on it must be torn down. If a kiosk is sited where it is not supposed to be, then it must be pulled down. If the pavements have been hijacked by traders, they must be cleared. No ifs, no buts.
There is a reason for these laws, and breaching them cannot be allowed to stand just because these structures are a fait accompli anyway.
To do so will be to mock the law and render it impotent, because it will send the signal that once your property is up and running, you can cockily thumb your nose at the law.
No civilised society can afford such impunity.
I believe that even innocent purchasers of properties in these areas, who have gone by the book and have obtained the necessary documentation from the authorities, cannot have these processes legitimised where the law is clear that the land is protected and restricted.
As the principle goes, one cannot give what one does not have.
The irony amongst the machismo and the plumes of dust as the bulldozers dig in cannot be lost.
To build in a ramsar site, one has to fill the land.
By all those numerous homeowners filling the land, the character and purpose of the Ramsar site has been altered forever.
As they break these homes, the real work to restore it to a Ramsar site would be to evacuate all the broken concrete and debris and to reduce the land levels so that water can still flow into it as a basin.
Without that, we are only kicking a can down the road.
It will not serve its intended purpose ever again and the potential problems of flooding when it rains would still be there with us as will the problem of denying ecological wildlife their homes.
I believe it cannot be right that the state officials who actively facilitated all of this and/or watched these structures go up be shielded from scrutiny and accountability.
To shield or refuse to punish one party to the mess is grossly unjust and only emboldens them to repeat the cycle when the noise has died down, the cameras have gone away and the bulldozers are silent.
The Ramsar demolitions should not be the end of this rather sorry spectacle, else it is only a matter of time before we are back at these protected sites.
That is not progress.
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng.
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