Like many developing countries, Ghana has both its traditional forms of dress, now reserved primarily for funerals and festivals, and Western clothing that has been adopted for everyday wear at work and at home. Although in the first decades of independence there were many skilled tailors and seamstresses who made a living providing clothing for men and women, boys and girls, in the last fifteen years of the 20th century the main source of Western-style clothing became the western. the countries themselves. However, the imported clothing was not new, but used clothing known in Ghana as oboroni wawu, “the white person has died” or “dead man’s clothing.”
In the Kalebule era under the dictatorship of Colonel / General Ignatious Kutu Acheampong (January 1972 to July 1978) and then General Fred Akuffo (July 1978 to June 1979), foreign exchange was very scarce and imports were very high. controlled. In this economic environment, local small-scale industries flourished and developed rapidly as local needs had to be met by local effort. This was the heyday of the informal sector in which developments in the local textile industries supported the expansion of the tailoring and clothing trades. With a brief hiatus during the democratic interlude under the presidency of Hilla Limann (September 1979 to December 1981), strict import controls were resumed after the second arrival of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings on December 31, 1981. .
Despite Rawlings’ initial promise never to return to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in 1983 the IMF dictated economic policy and in 1985 cheap foreign goods flooded Ghana, financed by long- and medium-term loans. There was undoubtedly some importation of used clothing prior to this time, but it was in the mid-1980s that the large-scale importation of oboroni wawu became a major topic in the media and a talking point in everyday conversation. , as well as a socioeconomic factor. government concern.
Attitudes toward importing used clothing were mixed. Many people felt it was a shame to wear other people’s discarded clothes and burden their children with the obligation to repay loans that would extend well beyond the useful life of the clothes. The government mourned the demise of the local textile and clothing industries and the resulting loss of employment. Meetings were held to determine whether import restrictions should be imposed, but this policy was rejected because it would have raised the cost of living, caused social unrest, and broken the free trade agreement with the IMF. The government ministers agreed that everyone depended on the oboroni wawu, including themselves.
In this era of free trade, imports were handled by traders who brought the cheapest products available to Ghana regardless of their quality. Most of the newly made products came from China, but used clothing came from Britain and other European countries. It arrived at the port of Tema, 30 km east of the capital, Accra, in large cloth-bound bundles about two meters in diameter. Importers dispatched the goods and transported them to the markets of the main cities and regional capitals.
Being present at the opening of the bundles was witnessing a social phenomenon of great interest. The women merchants who sold the products to the general public mainly specialized in one line of clothing: men’s shirts, T-shirts, pants, women’s dresses, underwear, etc. Everyone was eager to get the best copies available: the least used, the latest fashions, the best quality. So when the bales of randomly mixed products were opened, there was a flurry of rugby activity that threatened to erupt into open warfare. The violence seemed to be limited only by the universal understanding that no one could sell a badly torn shirt, but this convention did not prevent some sturdier items from being subjected to vigorous tug of war.
After the fight for the merchandise came the haggling over the price, but here the owner of the bullet exercised an almost dictatorial power. Prices were necessarily arbitrary, but experience brought a degree of standardization to commonly traded items. The system was familiar to all participants and worked steadily for the next decade. There were too many vested interests at all levels for fundamental change to take place.
Only increased prosperity can put an end to oboroni wawu. In the 21st century, with Ghana ascending to lower-middle-income status, people can afford to buy more from an emerging fashion trade supported by local textile industries, processing Ghanaian cotton and embracing the relatively new artisan skills of tie dyeing. and batik. Hopefully enough of the tailors and seamstresses of the 1970s have survived to pass their skills on to a generation that must produce the wealth to pay off the loans of the 1980s.