A word of advice to our happy-go-lucky leaders: Keep that uranium underground

It was recently reported in this newspaper — and I was slightly shocked to hear it— that Tanzania had significant deposits of uranium, and that government plans are underway to start mining the stuff. My shock was not at the existence of uranium deposits — that was more or less known — but at the idea that we are getting ready to dig it out of the bowels of the earth.

I have little doubt that people in decision making positions in our country are aware that uranium is a very sensitive material and one that world powers are ready to do murder to lay their hands on.

Even ignorant members of our society will know that the link between uranium and nuclear power (and the attention that these attract from around the world) should make our rulers a little circumspect when dealing with such issues.

No, the happy-go-lucky rulers of this country seem to think you can make announcements about uranium with the same insouciance you would normally associate with trivia. In fact, I suspect I spied a little glee in the announcement, as if we were about to embark on a project to deliver us from poverty and backwardness.

There seems to be very little comprehension among our government types of basic truths that ordinary people around the world know, one of them being that you do not predicate your development efforts on extractive industries such as oil and minerals.

Many years after the world identified the “Dutch Disease” and the “resource curse,” we still have people in positions of power who remain gloriously clueless about the dangers inherent in extraction.

Not long ago, I followed some churlish wrangling over rumoured deposits of oil somewhere between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, with the Zanzibaris shouting themselves hoarse about “our oil” and generally behaving like they had finally cut the Gordian Knot of poverty, totally oblivious to the real dangers of adding oil to the smouldering political embers on those islands. Somebody seemed hell bent on fanning up a huge bonfire there.

We have very little evidence to suggest that African countries are capable of benefiting from their oil and mineral resource; on the other hand, we have plenty of evidence of the “resource curse” all the way from Angola to Sudan to Nigeria to Sierra Leone.

A typical country afflicted by this curse can count itself lucky if all that it’s left with are gaping holes in the ground and a scorched-earth ecology.

Much worse has been visited on others, including wholesale murder, rape, arson and the destruction of the human spirit.

But all that counts as small beer when we are dealing with a mineral item like uranium, which is sought by so many governments, groups and individuals for various uses that we may not be too clear about.

Though traditionally this mineral was coveted by governments vying for ascendancy in the nuclear arms race, today shadowy organisations and individuals want a stake in the balance of terror, and are increasingly paying attention to announcements such as ours.

We will definitely not be able to shake off the unwelcome attentions of the big boys who have turfs to protect and a monopolistic situation to maintain.

After all, those who have already armed themselves with nuclear teeth do not want anyone else to join their exclusive club.

But the small guys will not be thwarted by what they consider a hypocritical stance, and they will do anything to get uranium, enrich it — or whatever they do with it — and keep it as their contribution to any future argument.