Concept of Structural Corruption : Management of Gold Extractives in Nuba Mountains as a Model

04:45 AM August, 15 2020

Sudanese Online
عبدالرحمن صالح احمد( ابو عفيف)-السودان
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The holistic concept of structural corruption begins with collapse of ethics, and then spread into whole human activities : Ottoman Empire , as a ruling regime in Sudan by power of Mohammed Ali Basha(1821-1885), first, had violated the natural human rights by enslaving the locals for working in gold extractives. Nubba Mountains, if compared with other Sudan regions , can be viewed as different part of Sudan ecologically , culturally and ethnically; it had become, since 1821, a last resort area, where people took refuge as fortified place, against slaves raiding by Ottoman forces, Actually, gold had been mined since 1788 in Nuba Mountains in small scale; but the Ottoman invasion of Sudan in 1821 was the biggest organized campaign for the sake of gold resources in Nuba Mountains; and since the British colonization up to the last quarter of 20th century, gold had remained untouched.
The characteristics of haphazard and unplanned economic activities in gold mining had been passed from generation to generation to be inherited by the former ruling regime (NCP Regime 1989-2019) as seen in all mining sites all over Sudan ; in the same way , this situation has induced the gold seekers (business lords) to constitute a shadow power, irrelevant to the Central government, so that ministry of finance and other legal authorities lost their tenure over public wealth generated from mine resources, this reflect the actual and clear signs of structural corruption.
In early 2000s, new sites of gold reserve were discovered by the local people in Nubba Mountains , this had induced the rush of people from different parts of Sudan to extract gold by locally made instruments , later in about 2011 after the outbreak of war “in South Kordofan and Blue Nile State” , the local government intervened to bring gold mining under its control and imposed some taxes and levies on the local extractives and land, and collect fees from persons who work on Gold mining ; and then later the federal government has intervened in the field with more orders and acts that have reinforced practice of corruption.
Having been very high productive area of ​​gold, Nuba Mountains attracted people from many different parts of Sudan to find chance for collecting fortune. The local authority enforced by central government , therefore, used their power to confiscate the locally-owned land plots, which were ruled with customary law, introduced new land act, the authority has, then, become able to demarcate, sell it to others, imposed high levies, this has motivated the local villagers and miners to cope with the newly introduced procedures, by fostering different strategies, such as paying bribery, using arms to protect their products or smuggling the gold products .counterfeit contracts, and looting.
There is Correlation between central and marginal corruption in reference to gold reserve :1- even the government violates the rules setout to protect the environment ; allow investment companies to use Sodium Cyanide to extract gold ; where the residents suffer the side effects. 2- in turn , people in the field and villagers have great role to promote and protect corruption behavior since they benefit from the central corruption. Otherwise, one organization called " Native committee for environment " has raised judicial complaint agaist the State Governer for he has been engaged in such illegal activities, the case has gone beyond this stage, that the government had deployed great police forces to protect gold mines owned by government–affiliated persons (National Conference Party).
Structural corruption can not be irradicated by casual procedures and arbitrary regulations; long run reforms , such as SDGs transformation,are necessarily required to restructure the whole system of gold mining investment ; and even the victims of corruption should be included in this structural reforms , because corruption, in this way ,forms such situations that trap simple people, and makes them serve the cycle of corruption in turn, and so they can not get rid of it by themselves, because of their false awareness about the whole situation, and this is the right case in which we should use strategic transformation to reach SDGs .
Abdurrahman Salih Ahmed(Abu Afif)
Email: [email protected]