Smit must just shut up - Nahas

The former and current education ministers have blasted Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) MP Nico Smit for implying that the post-independence government education system has failed the nation.

Smit this week explicitly blamed the country's first education minister Nahas Angula for what he calls the “disastrous state of our education”.

Angula responded yesterday by saying Smit “must just shut up”.

He also said stressed policies he introduced were “good” and is the reason why “hundreds” of Namibians are able to “think for themselves” and go to university.

In his contribution in parliament this week, Smit said Angula's decision to introduce English as the medium of instruction was flawed.

He also accused Angula of abolishing all pre-primary schools operated by the government, which in turn deprived thousands of disadvantaged children of the essential opportunity to learn the basics of education.

Angula, who was education minister from 1990 to 1995 and then, for the next ten years, served as the higher education minister until 2005, is widely credited with a smorgasbord of wide-ranging reforms to education in the country following independence.

He has endured criticism before for removing the pre-primary phase of schooling and on other occasions, removing road safety from the curriculum, amongst others.

Smit continued to blame the Swapo government of mixing politics and education which eventually, according to him, has ruined the lives of three generations of Namibian children.



“You need only to compare the results achieved by the private schools that have proliferated across Namibia since independence and the government-run schools in the country, to realise that the problems being experienced in government schools are not insurmountable. However, until now, this government has been unwilling to address the real problems and act to fix them,” he said.



Angula said he understands Smit's outburst because the pre-independence education system was “better for the cultural minority of European descent”.



Angula justified his introduction of English as medium of instruction by saying it was a neutral language accepted by all Namibians.



“If we had the mindset of the Afrikaners we would have said let us take Oshiwambo, but we did not. Smit must just shut up,” he said.



He added that he was fully aware that the majority of teachers were unqualified at the dawn of independence - directly because of the Bantu education system which did not prepare them for teaching.



“I knew it would take time for education to stabilise. We have put measures in place and as a result, transformed the education system to a place where it is now.



“We found a curriculum that was designed by a group of people with all the resources on earth to cater for their needs. And we transformed it into a system which produced critical thinkers - people who can think for themselves today.”



Incumbent education minister Katrina Hanse-Himarwa said Smit must “wake up from his colonial slumber and hallucinations”.



She added Smit would have found the pre-independence education system favourable because it deprived black people any opportunity.



“What may have been good in his perception is that the whites were allocated the biggest chunk compared to the other racial groups. Furthermore, education was provided along racial lines whereby black children received an inferior Bantu education under inferior circumstances, including resources and educational material,” she said.



Bensen Katjirijova, the secretary-general of the PDM's youth league leapt to Smit's defence and issued a statement yesterday, lamenting the fact that “politics of the belly have taken centre-stage, before education”.



“It goes without saying that education is the most important sector in our country, and therefore has to come first and foremost before politics of the belly.”

JEMIMA BEUKES