In the kokompes, the informal industrial areas of Ghana, such as the large Suame Magazine in Kumasi, the typical small auto repair business consists of one master craftsman assisted by four or five apprentices. The apprenticeship system has been heavily criticized as a form of exploitation. Apprentices are not given a regular salary but only ‘snack money’, enough money to buy food, and the working hours are long, often twelve hours a day, six days a week, but generally the Apprentices appear to be reasonably content with their lot and apprenticeship is seen as providing an appropriate and highly coveted initiation into the career ahead. Some teachers are more enlightened than others and provide better instruction and more pleasant working conditions. For those apprentices who encounter tyrants, there is always the option of running away; an option that many take. In most of the workshops the atmosphere is relaxed and the pace of work unhurried. You spend a lot of time waiting for work to arrive, and when it arrives there is the possibility of seeing someone else attend to it. When it’s your turn, it’s a welcome distraction.
Although the hours are long, leave for personal errands, illness or funeral attendance is easily granted. The pattern of discipline is more domestic than industrial. For the new apprentice, only the work of his hands is new. The social environment is totally familiar to him and, in this sense, he experiences much less trauma than his European counterpart, who enters a new and strange factory environment. If he has a complaint, it is usually a lack of cash, and this problem is addressed by various means, some legitimate and with much tolerance extended in most cases to illegitimate ones.
The informal sector forms a bridge between the legitimate and the illegitimate, the formal sector and the underworld. It is this less than tasty aspect of kokompes that makes them unpopular with law enforcement agencies and tax collectors. There is a tendency among those in authority to regard kokompes as dens of thieves, and there is no doubt that certain criminal elements take refuge among them. Master key and shifter makers find a ready market for their wares in a society where high unemployment and mass poverty coexist with conspicuous wealth, and auto parts stores aren’t always reticent about recycling some of the waste. swag.
Although the vast majority of artisans and apprentices in the informal sector are not thieves, they can bend the law to its limits in West Africa. At a time when imported parts are scarce, they are never found in formal sector stores and service stations, but only in magazines and kokompes. The diversion is carried out by the master installers who take advantage of their links with the automobile agencies of the formal sector. A brother in the store department will ensure that all goods received from abroad are sold in bulk to the family parts store or assembly shop at the magazine. The sale is nominally legitimate and the correct ‘government controlled’ price is paid, but it creates the opportunity to make a profit that, in percentage terms, would satisfy insiders on the New York Stock Exchange.
The effective monopoly on the supply of all imported spare parts was a major factor in the rapid expansion of the informal sector in Ghana in the late 1970s and early 1980s. from the formal sector were directed to the kokompe to obtain the necessary spare parts. Soon the custom passed directly to the kokompe where the work was done faster and with less hassle. In this way, workshops were eliminated from the formal sector and the kokompes absorbed all available businesses in their domain. The client ended up paying more for his repair but the many mouths of the master’s extended family were well fed and all of his sons and nephews became apprentices. Suame Magazine in Kumasi became an economic powerhouse, attracting an impressive new branch of the commercial bank of Ghana with, reputedly, the country’s largest vault.