The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ing. Kenneth Ashigbey, has urged the government to keep diplomatic tensions over xenophobic attacks in South Africa separate from commercial decisions regarding the renewal of Gold Fields’ Tarkwa mining lease.
His comments come amid growing public debate over whether Ghana should decline to renew the South African company’s lease as retaliation for xenophobic attacks targeting Ghanaians and other foreign nationals in South Africa.
Some groups have pushed for exactly that, while the Institute of Economic Affairs Ghana has used the debate to advance a broader resource nationalism agenda in the extractive sector.
Speaking on Citi Prime News, Ashigbey acknowledged the gravity of the xenophobic attacks but argued that Ghana’s response should go through diplomatic and continental channels — not commercial agreements governed by law and contract.
“It is so shameful and regrettable that a country that Ghana and other countries supported during Apartheid would come to this. But I think we need to separate that completely from other commercial relationships that we have,” he said.
He stressed that Gold Fields, as a corporate entity, had materially met the terms of its lease and had no involvement in the attacks, making it an inappropriate target for diplomatic retaliation.
“I will say that we should separate the xenophobic attacks from the commercial businesses as far as Gold Fields is concerned. Gold Fields as a corporate body has met materially the terms of their lease. They have not been involved in any of these attacks, so I don’t see why we should be using that to deal with this issue,” he said.
