| This thesis offers the analytics of Marxism as the most helpful 'research programme' to explore the principal trends in Namibian educational development over a given period of time i.e., historically. A multidisciplinary framework for conducting historical sociology in the African peripheries is advanced.;This study starts by recognizing the colonial state formation in Namibia in the context of both German and South African penetration and discusses the progressive secularization of segregated educational structures and facilities. The process is accompanied with Namibia's closer integration into the global division of labour, production, consumption and accumulation cycle. The unequal education systems and opportunities of the colony are fashioned to the dictates of capitalist accumulation specific to the racialist formation of what is known as "Africa of the labour reserves." Thus understood Namibia's historic relations and modern educational institutions, have historically evolved in the context of systemic imperialist subjugation and are therefore conceived as integral parts of what Frantz Fanon refers to as the setting up of a colonial system or 'situation' among colonial peoples.;Chapter 5, titled "Bantu Education or 'Schools of Servitude'" explores the emergence of 'Bantu Education', as a unique educational intervention. "After Etosha" addresses the dramatic policy shifts in SWAPO's educational policies in the course of the 1980's, characterized as they were by the progressive abandonment of the revolutionary conception of post-apartheid educational possibilities as elaborated in the Political Programme and Programme of Action adopted earlier in the struggle for independence.;The final chapters explore the state's post-apartheid efforts at 'addressing' the objectives of the Basic Education For All international 'consensus' in the context of the critical goals specifically articulated as national policy in a series of reform directives. The role of the multilateral and bilateral world systemic institutions and dominant State/NGO agencies involved in the knowledge production, distribution and consumption business are clarified in the course of this discussion.;By focusing on the racial dynamics implied by the state's liberal commitment to equality of opportunities and attempts at desegregation, the final sections address themselves to possible explications/explanations and conclusions that may be drawn from the practical pursuit of this particular reform. |
