Louis Vuitton’s R52K bag looks awfully familiar…

Updated Sept. 30, 2025, 10:22 a.m. | By East Coast Breakfast / Skyye Ndlovu

Haibo! Louis Vuitton’s R52K “Machangane Bag” has Mzansi shook!

Machangane LV — Louis Vuitton Tote bag / X

Louis Vuitton is one of the biggest luxury brands in the world, famous for its designer apparel, shoes, accessories, and of course - bags.

If you’re into the finer things in life, you’ve probably dreamed of owning at least one LV item, even if it’s the tiniest, cheapest thing in their catalogue.

However, this release? Oh, it’s causing a stir in South Africa and across the continent because it looks a little too familiar.

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In fact, you might already have it sitting in your cupboard. Or you’ve definitely seen it being lugged into a taxi rank or across a border post.

Yup. That one.

Louis Vuitton dropped a $3,000 (R52,000) version of what South Africans lovingly call the Machangane Bag. Others might try to be fancy and call it a "Tote" bag.

Louis Vuitton launches its new bag worth over R52 000. pic.twitter.com/ZfFT4sPMC0
— Musa Khawula (@MsaKhawula) September 28, 2025

In West Africa, it’s famously (and hilariously) known as the “Ghana Must Go” bag. Yes - that’s actually its real name.

How'd the bag get its name?

The design itself first appeared in Hong Kong back in the 1960s and 70s, but the name “Ghana Must Go” dates back to 1983, during Nigeria’s mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants.

Over two million foreigners (mostly Ghanaians) were ordered to leave in a matter of days.

Guess what they packed all their belongings in? These massive, checkered, woven plastic bags.

They became a symbol of mobility and survival.

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Here in Mzansi, you can grab one of these bags for anything between R40 and R200 (and that’s if you’re going boujee with the “deluxe” version).

Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton said, “Bet.” They slapped their monogram on it, called it a luxury statement piece, and priced it at R52,000. Yoh!

To put that into perspective, for the same price, you could:

Buy a brand-new iPhone 17 Pro Max 512GB

Cover 6 months’ rent (in a decent apartment, nogal)

Or… buy about 1,000 of the original Machangane bags.

Of course, Twitter/X went wild.

One user wrote: “Looks like a money laundering scheme.” Honestly, not wrong.

Another commented: “No ways - that one is R30 and the bigger one is R50 in my hood.” Clearly, LV added a few extra zeroes by mistake.

Now even if you fork out R52K for this bag, you still might not be able to travel with it.

That’s because airlines like Air France and KLM banned these woven bags years ago.

Air France KLM banned — Air France bans Matted Woven Bags in 2017 / sagetravels.com

According to KLM: “Unfortunately, matted woven bags are not allowed. They can be easily disrupted, and the materials can damage airport equipment and delay baggage delivery.”

So unless LV secretly reinforced theirs with space-age tech (for R52K, it should really levitate), your luxury luggage might still be grounded.

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