NewsOmar Sterling and M.anifest's "Makola Dreams" and the market soldiers destroyed in a day
The 2021 song treats life as one long bargain. Its title points back to August 1979, when the AFRC gave traders one night's notice and Makola Market was gone by the next evening.
"Makola Dreams" by Omar Sterling featuring M.anifest is track 5 on Same Earth Different Worlds, released in June 2021. The official audio is on the R2Bees channel. M.anifest takes the first verse and Omar the second.
Everything has a price
M.anifest opens with The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene's book. He plays on the number, saying that by 48 he will write books about what he has seen. He mentions childhood dreams of being Jean-Claude Van Damme, then warns himself that ambition without vision leaves you poor. He also describes the music business as a market where everyone is chasing the hit.
The hook says we are all caught up in buying and selling. That is where the title comes in.
Saturday, 18 August 1979
Wikipedia dates Makola Market in Accra to 1924. After the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) took power in 1979, market traders were accused of kalabule: cheating, hoarding and selling above the control price.
Women were caned in public, and some were stripped. A Daily Graphic editorial at the time asked whether they needed to be stripped naked. The Ghanaian Times reported that one trader got 24 strokes of the cane over a stock of corned beef, washing powder, soap and whiskey.
On the evening of Friday, 17 August 1979, an announcement on radio and TV told traders to collect their goods from Makola by 6 a.m. the next day. On Saturday the soldiers moved in, and by that evening Makola Market was gone. Accounts of how it was pulled down differ. Years later, Rawlings said he gave the order.
A Ghanaian childhood
Omar's verse compares the poor world and the rich world. Where people have little, he says, they are humble and look out for each other. Where there is money, competition breeds hate. Same earth, different worlds.
He then looks back on growing up: fighting for kanzo, the rice that burns at the bottom of the pot; angwamo, oil rice; and suffering worse than Oshin, the girl from the 1980s Japanese drama that played on GTV and gave Ghana a saying for hard times.
In 1979 the soldiers thought that breaking down a market would end the bargaining. Makola was never only a building. We are all Makola, because haggling over rent, salary and love is how we live.
- Audiomack, Apple Music and notJustOk: Same Earth Different Worlds tracklist and release (June 2021)
- R2Bees on YouTube: "Makola Dreams" official audio
- Barbara Harrell-Bond, "Women and the 1979 Ghana Revolution" (ICWA, 1979), citing Daily Graphic (20 Aug 1979), West Africa (27 Aug 1979) and Ghanaian Times (25 Jun 1979)
- Wikipedia and Ghana Remembers: Makola Market history
- MyJoyOnline: Jerry Rawlings on ordering the demolition (Jan 2014)
- Talking Drums: treatment of market women in 1979 (17 Oct 1983)
- Global Media Journal and BBC Mundo: Oshin on GTV and the saying "suffer like Oshin"
Every factual line in this story is checked against at least two independent sources, unless the text says it comes from one report.