How the ‘Ghana Must Go’ bag made it to a Louis Vuitton runway

IF YOU grew up anywhere from Accra to Alexandra, you know this bag. Woven plastic. Red-white-blue checks.

- VUYILE MADWANTSI

Foldable enough to slip under a bed, expandable enough to pack an entire life.

In South Africa, it goes by many names: Mashangane bag, Khonzekhaya, uMasgoduke, Mmalebogo bag, No Problem bag, but across West Africa, one name stuck hardest: Ghana Must Go.

That phrase carries weight. In 1983, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Ghanaians were abruptly expelled from Nigeria.

With hours to leave, families stuffed everything into these cheap market bags. The name “Ghana Must Go” was coined and has since become a shorthand term for both migration and resilience.

As cultural historian Dr Nana Osei Quarshie notes in Africa Is a Country, “The bag is more than luggage. Its a symbol of survival and displacement.”

Fast-forward to 2007. Louis Vuitton, under Marc Jacobs, unveils a plaid laundry tote as part of its Spring/Summer collection, a leather-braided, zip-topped “play on high and low” version of the humble market bag.

Original retail price: about $595 (R10 300). Today, resellers list it at $1 200 to $2 500. For a bag most South Africans still buy for under R100 at taxi ranks, it’s an eye-watering markup.

Long before the runways, the fabric had its own migration story. The red-white-blue nylon canvas was invented in Japan, exported to Taiwan, then Hong Kong, where tailor Lee Wah reportedly made the first bags in the 1960s.

Initially used for a construction-site shelter, it morphed into a cheap, durable carryall.