Continuous primitive accumulation in Ghana: the real-life stories of dispossessed peasants in three mining communities

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide an opportunity for the peasants in three mining communities in Ghana to voice their experiences of primitive accumulation under contemporary global neo-liberalism. There is a plethora of literature on the exploitation of Africa, drawing on theories of new imperialism or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. However, there is not much grassroots empirical work on how different social groups experience accumulation by dispossession. It seems that NGOs and journalists do better on this than intellectuals. I seek in this article to contribute to filling this lacuna, by focusing on the hardest hit social group, namely, the peasants. I also argue that the existence of this lacuna has major theoretical and political implications for the struggle for alternatives to capitalism and ‘development’ that is distinctly anti-imperialist. The article is based on data collected through focus group discussions and in-depth personal interviews with peasants affected by surface mining activities of transnational mining corporations in three mining communities in the resource-rich Western Region of Ghana: Prestea, Dumasi and Teberebie.

Experiencing primitive accumulation as alienation: Mangrove forest privatization, enclosures and the everyday adaptation of bodies to capital in ruralSenegal

“…Acknowledgement that large‐scale land privatizations are a vehicle for the accumulation of capital has led to the frequent use of the concepts “primitive accumulation” and “accumulation by dispossession” (AbD) to conceptualize these expropriations (Adnan, ; Ayelazuno, ; Baird, ; Benjaminsen & Bryceson, ; Bush, ; Corson, ; Kelly, ; Levien, ). Marx used the term primitive accumulation to refer to a process of expropriation enabling the emergence and survival of the social relations of capitalist production through the division of human beings into a class of workers (i.e., the expropriated class, which needs to work to secure subsistence) and a class of nonworkers (i.e., the expropriating class, which lives and accumulates through the use of workers' labour).…”

Large-scale mining and ecological imperialism in Africa: the politics of mining and conservation of the ecology in Ghana

“…The material presented and discussed below is gleaned from secondary and primary sources. The former is the prodigious body of literature, scholarly and grey, describing and analyzing foreign mining companies and mining communities in Ghana (see for example, Akabzaa 2000; Akabzaa and Darimani 2001;Andrews 2018Andrews , 2019Ayelazuno 2011Ayelazuno , 2014CHRAJ 2008;Human Rights Clinic 2010;Ismi 2003;WACAM 2016;Wan 2014). The primary source is based on ethnographic work we did in four mining communities in the Western region; Bondaye, Prestea, Dumasi, and Teberebi in the Prestea-Huni Valley and Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipalities.…”

“…The implementation of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in the 1980s resulted in what could be described as the 'new' gold rush in Ghana, given that these reforms resulted in the liberalization of the mining sector with stupendous flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into gold mining (Hilson and Potter 2005:107;Hilson and Yakovleva 2007: 101). Large tracts of land are the direct targets for acquisition by multinational and foreign mining companies entering the sector (Andrews 2019;Ayelazuno 2011). This is because of the use of surface mining technology, a mode of mining that, unlike traditional deep shaft and underground mining, requires a lot of land (Schueler et al 2011).…”

“…We seek to contribute to this body of literature by drawing on the insights of political ecology; in particular, the competition for and conflicts over the appropriation of natural resources by powerful and powerless classes, vis-à-vis the unequal distribution of the negative environmental effects of this appropriation between different classes of people and regions of the world. So often, the biases of the government of Ghana in favor of LSM and against ASM are illustrated by the generous investment incentives it gives to corporations (see Ayelazuno 2011;Hilson and Hilson 2017;Hilson 2017). We seek to amplify and explain an additional, albeit marginalized, dimension of these biases: ecological biases.…”

“…This violence and these biases have been documented empirically, as have the inherent enclave economic tendencies and characteristics of mining and other extractive industries under the neoliberal world order (Ferguson 2005). How policies and actions engender not development, but new imperialist/neocolonialist exploitation and 'accumulation by dispossession' in Ghana has also been addressed (Andrews 2018;Ayelazuno 2011). We seek to contribute to this body of literature by drawing on the insights of political ecology; in particular, the competition for and conflicts over the appropriation of natural resources by powerful and powerless classes, vis-à-vis the unequal distribution of the negative environmental effects of this appropriation between different classes of people and regions of the world.…”