Petition Demolition
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 16/Jan/2011 15:43, 34 days ago
Having signed up to be a member of Amnesty International at University, I am still sent e-mails every so often. One such e-mail sent on 12th December caught my eye:Subject: Sign our petition by Monday to stop forced evictions in Ghana.Content: Thousands of people living and working next to railway lines in Accra, Ghana could be forcibly evicted from their homes within days. Please sign our urgent petition to stop the evictions… Some residents have lived along the railway in Accra for over 17 years. Ghanaian authorities have not provided any alternative housing to the residents, and have no plans to do so after the evictions. The residents face homelessness and destitution if they are forcibly evicted from their homes.On 1 December, vans with megaphones visited the informal settlements ordering people to dismantle their homes and businesses and vacate the area within two weeks. The announcement warned that any structure not removed within two weeks would be demolished. Previous demolitions have been accompanied by an excessive use of force by police and other security forces.After years of neglect and degradation, the government has signed a $6bn deal to revamp the railways that fell into disrepair in the 1980s (to put this in perspective, the GDP of Ghana last year was $16bn). This, in the language of the government, requires the demolition of the illegal structures that have been constructed on the existing abandoned railway and the removal of the squatters that inhabit them. With this in mind, the government first officially warned the railway residents that they’d be clearing the area in October 2009 and then again in November 2010. They say that alternative places have been made available for people to occupy but that residents have refused to move into the new areas.We happened to be driving around Accra soon after Christmas and saw the old railway lines teeming with rickety wooden structures covered with rusty corrugated iron. They didn’t appear to have been pulled down. Maybe the petition worked. Maybe the railway reconstruction will have to be put on hold.Returning to Bolga, we were shocked to find the famous market undergoing a similar forced evacuation– albeit without an organised international mass petition.Bolga market is an organic maze of lanes and alleys between wooden stalls propped up on slender beams and coated in a thin layer of corrugated iron. There is no grid system, no central location and no radial system. It is a system of organised chaos. Stalls have cropped up and stayed. Others have then parked themselves on either side and a street has formed. Roads have worn themselves down through the passage of hundreds upon thousands of footfalls. There are clusters of fish sellers, goat sellers, tomato sellers and millet sellers. It takes up an area of nearly a square kilometre in the centre of town. We have learned to navigate our way around the seemingly random layout, the wandering cows and head porters. The system resembles the human brain– a sprawling mass of interconnected neurons, illogical at times, romantic at others, occasionally infuriating but always working.In 2008, traders were warned that the market would be redeveloped in 2011 and that they should move to an alternative site earmarked by the district assembly. This new market area is set out with wooden stalls in a grid system and wide pedestrian streets. It still has wandering goats, chickens and children but is more organised, regular and planned. The layout makes navigating around and finding what you want far easier. Well-connected individuals have bought up the designated stalls in prime locations over the past two years. Most small traders in the market could not afford the asking price for the stalls or the rent charged by the richer stall owners. They did not have the contacts or family connections to help organise a plot in the newly developed market. Shoppers kept coming to the old market site leaving the new market empty. They had little choice but to carry on selling in their condemned plots, ignoring the government warning and hoping the worst would not happen.The worst has happened. On Saturday 8th January, the third market day of 2011, buyers and sellers turned up to the market area to find bulldozers levelling the place. Rows of breeze-block shops, wooden stalls and tables were cleared. Police accompanied the demolition to keep angry traders away. It being a market day, people still needed to buy and sell. Traders sat on the floor and displayed their wares on the piles of rubble. Buyers, including us, tiptoed around the wreckage. Over the following days, former shop owners could be seen carrying wood, corrugated iron and any other salvageable debris away on their heads.The following evening, we were sat in a pito spot next to the demolished market area and got chatting to a drunk old woman who introduced herself as Mama. Her tongue lubricated by alcohol, Mama spoke passionately about how she used to sell rice husks as pig food in the market but has now been removed. She described the authorities moving her and the bulldozers knocking down her area of the market. She doesn’t have the money to get a place in the new market and, even if she did, it is a smaller area and there is no room for more people. We asked Mama what she plans to do now. She shrugged. We bought her another calabash of pito.Kwesi developed his electronic shop from a rickety wooden shed into a permanent-looking brick building two or three months ago. The work cost over 1000GHc (£500), money inherited from his mother who recently collected her overdue pension. The authorities have now sprayed a warning on the shop telling Kwesi to evacuate before the bulldozers move in.I asked Kwesi and Mama about compensation and they both shrugged their shoulders.“The district assembly served a notice two years ago,” Kwesi told me again. “They do not need to give compensation. They are the government and can do what they like. What can we do?”This is not, after all, an unprecedented disaster. Twelve years ago, the market was held in the area now being touted as the area to relocate to. Bursting at the seams and as disorganised as ever, the authorities wanted to develop the area. For rebuilding to take place, traders were forced to up-sticks and rebuild their businesses. Never supposed to be a permanent settlement, the unplanned“new market” was allowed to grow into its present organic sprawl. The small shops and stalls were not registered or licensed. Being an NDC idea, the “old market” redevelopment was put on hold during the NPP years (2000 – 2008). Two-storey buildings were constructed but, when the money ranout, left unfinished. Finally, with the NDC re-elected in 2008, the stalls were finished, the grid system planned and traders encouraged to return. Notice was also served on all those unlicensed and illegal properties in the “new market”, including Kwesi’s and Mama’s, and now the bulldozershave moved in.Unable to get a plot in the new area, Kwesi has marked out a small area on the main road where he plans to build a table to sell electronic goods. The road is now lined with similar informal stakes– all people thrown off the market site now trying to start again. He is surprisingly positive about his new situation. The road is a good location to sell, he tells me. The market site needs to be developed, he says. He hopes to appeal and save his shop. Maybe the assembly will find some money tohelp him start again. If not… well… that’s life. Mama was similarly supportive of the assembly - Bolga needs to be developed, she said. They are planning to build a new road, government houses and offices. I don’t think I would be so philosophical in their situation.I noticed that a billboard has been erected next to the market. It proudly states that the Japanese are sponsoring the new road being built through the market site; it names the contractor who will be carrying out the development work and highlights the involvement of the district assembly in the planning process. Underneath the billboard, in the shade, a displaced young market woman sat on the ground behind her small piles of okra on a cloth, each one costing 20 pesewas (10p). Her baby lay uncomplaining on her lap.