Like in many African countries, education in Namibia was brought by different missionary societies. The first formal Western school was established by the London Mission and Wesleyan Societies in 1805 at Warmbad, in southern Namibia. The Rhenish church started working in the central, western and southern parts of the country while the Finnish Mission in 1870, worked in the North. The Roman Catholic Church worked among the Nama and Ovaherero in 1888 and 1896 respectively and later extended their activities to Kavango in 1910 (Cohen, 1994). The Seventh Day Adventist Church established a mission school in the Caprivi Strip in the 1920s at Katima Mulilo, followed by the Roman Catholic Capuchin Fathers in 1944.
The Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa started a Reformed Mission in 1958 at Katima Mulilo (Buys and Nambala, 2003). With the advent of white missionaries, education in Africa changed drastically, and in the process, Africans were forced to believe that their education systems and beliefs were evil. Despite the emergence of these churches, education for blacks was only tackled on an organised basis in the early forties when the South African government decided to introduce primary schools by using Christian missions.
The financing of schools for blacks was put in the hands of communities with very little financial support from the racist South African government, while education for Whites was compulsory and free by 1906. This meant that with the little financial resources of local communities, schools were supposed to be bailed out by people who sent their children to those schools. At the dawn of independence in 1990, the new political dispensation took control of the financing of education. It systematically followed that in each yearly national budget educational provision was always given the lion’s share.
This has been the trend for all these years, while the multimillionaires of Namibia contributed very little towards the staggering financing of schools. Of course, some schools have been benefiting from NGOs and other private entities by buying them a handful of items which could be used by a few learners. For example, donating five laptops or computers for five hundred students is not helpful enough if schools have to achieve literate levels. The government on the other hand is equally struggling to purchase and provide all necessary stationery and laptops for every school.
It is therefore imperative that former year-enders in schools should step in and find ways and means of assisting schools they once attended. This will be another way of appreciating the communities and ploughing back into the schools in monetary terms and other assistance. Money raised during re-unions is not enough to buy the much-needed school items.
In order to assist schools in improving the infrastructure, each cabal of year-enders could organise themselves and decide on the type of assistance they would provide to the schools in their communities. For example, year-enders at a particular school like Imwiko Secondary School in the Zambezi region in 1990 could agree to contribute money and build a laboratory block. Their followers, which are a class of 1991, could organise themselves and buy the same school computers and laptops.
Therefore, the groups and the items to be bought go ahead every year. After five years of these contributions, Imwiko Secondary School would find itself having achieved some measure of assistance in many aspects.
This can be an easy formula if the former graduates from the schools have the interests of their former schools at heart. Nevertheless, the mentality among many graduates is that the Namibian government is there and will take care of everything because it has government money. What is government money after all? because the same money being talked about is taxpayers’ money. Some countries have managed with this system and came out with good results. Israel for example with its kibbutz (communal system) has achieved some reasonable measures and Tanzania for some time flirted with Ujamaa.
Ghana has equally been doing very well with this system and has reaped fruits in achieving some better infrastructure pertaining to enhancing and improving the learning environment. Imagine the amount of money and assistance that schools would receive from such an arrangement if every year-ender at every school could make such a
contribution.
The government will be relieved of some of the unnecessary expenditure and small capital projects and focus on major issues of national importance. In a similar vein, if some of the money which is being embezzled could be channelled to such a system, it could make much difference. Another thing to consider is that many of the schools produced high profiled technocrats who are holding the highest offices in the land, and who can equally organise and participate in such financial alleviating schemes for schools.
However, what is happening in Namibia is that many politicians and high profiled officers are not even banking their money in the country but store their loot abroad for safekeeping. Whereas it is their constitutional right to do so, it would have been better to keep their savings nearer home so that it could contribute to the educational development of Namibia.
There are lessons Namibia should learn from the careless manner in which money is handled instead of putting it to good use like the millions, which were found hidden on a farm in a trunk. That money could have been used to buy some school materials which would ultimately meant ploughing back into schools.