Contingent constellations: African urban complexity seen through the workings of a Ghanaian bus station

Abstract

In this article, I explore the intricate relationship between regulation and contingency in processes of urban economic organisation by focusing on the workings of a central bus station in Accra, Ghana. After introducing the position of the station in Ghana’s urban economy and transport infrastructure, I set out its internal regulative arrangements in relation to larger socio-economic and political constellations the practices of the station workers are contingent upon. Next, I turn the analysis around and describe the ways in which people accommodate themselves within, exploit and thereby co-produce emergent contingencies. The focus on the station, I suggest, offers a window into the complex constituents of niche economic practices that prevail in many spheres of African cities and allows a nuanced reflection on the incongruous and undetermined dynamics of everyday urban ‘becomings.’

Keywords:

• bus station
• urban economy
• complexity
• contingency
• Accra, Ghana

Acknowledgements

Field research for this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the project “Roadside and travel communities: towards an understanding of the African long-distance road.” For valuable advice and critical comments, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Social Dynamics, as well as to Kurt Beck, Ato Quayson, Anna-Riikka Kauppinen, Kathrin Heitz Tokpa, Gabriel Klaeger and Rami Wadelnour.

Notes

1. As of yet, a female bus or taxi driver is an unheard-of case in Ghana; unlike, for example, in South Africa (Khosa 1997).

2. These prominent two strands of the Africanist urban research agenda correspond with what Kate Meagher (2010, 21–22) terms the ‘dramatic’ and ‘enthusiastic’ view, respectively. For a poignant critique of the both views, see Ferguson (2006, esp. 1–23) and Fredericks and Diouf (2014).

3. These interviews included talks with representatives from all levels of Neoplan’s transport workers, as well as with senior administrative staff of regional and national transport and urban planning divisions, with executives of Ghana’s private road transport associations, and with station vendors, itinerants and passengers.

4. This token of military force used in order to strengthen the economic pursuits and presence of (exclusively male) private transport entrepreneurs in Accra’s urban arena stands in stark contrast to the military-back forces Rawlings’ junta mobilised for the destruction of major markets and the violent eviction of traders, most of which were women (Robertson 1983).

5. For a discussion of the relationships between the (colonial and post-colonial) state and private road transport entrepreneurs in Ghana before the 1980s, see Fouracre et al. (1994), Hart (2011) and Stasik (2015b).

6. The basic distribution of the positions of the office and yard staff dates to the colonial era, when it was adapted from the organisational pattern of the Gold Coast railway station personnel (in turn derived from the model of ‘the Victorian railway’; see Lacy [1967]). The term ‘porter’ is an evident remnant of this legacy; as is the term ‘gang,’ which goes back to the designation of a ‘railroad gang,’ hence a group of labourers and not of delinquents.

7. According to Price (1974, 175), the term ‘big man’ designates male individuals of ‘social weight, worth, and responsibility,’ whilst ‘small boy’ invokes a man’s lack of social, economic, political and gendered power. Nugent (1995, 3) subsumes their unequal status relationship as follows: ‘The “big men” issue commands, normally from a seated position, while subordinates [small boys] do the running.’

8. The thereby created new labels of work echo the implied levels of inventiveness, comprising a broad spectrum of derivations of existing designations, such as ‘shift master,’ ‘gang leader,’ ‘second porter’ and so forth.

9. There are two main modes of payment the station transport workers receive. The first is the ‘chop money,’ which is derived from parts of the revenue made from the loading of every single bus and disbursed among those who participated in the loading immediately after departure. The second is the ‘office money,’ which stems from an assigned share of all revenues made by the branch during a day and is disbursed among porters and officers only.

10. Their outsider status is also reflected in the origin of their label. Derived from a colloquial expression in Hausa, ‘balabala’ refers to trivial or deceptive manners of speech and to forms of poorly paid, exploitative physical labour. As one Hausa speaker explained to me: ‘Balabala is when you talk shit or when you carry shit.’

11. There is a strong parallel to be drawn here between the productive kinds of confusions emergent from the station workers’ quotidian interactions and Guyer’s (2015) discussion of Tutuola’s ‘Slanderer’ (who causes ‘one confusion after another’; referred to by Tutuola as the ‘confusionist’) who comes to exemplify the idea that indeterminacy (as confusion) is expectable and therefore needs to be acted upon.