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Abstract
Technical and vocational education in colonial Namibia was intricately linked with the growing need for labour in the colonial economy, especially the mining sector. The colonial administration, through the provision of technical education to indigenous Namibians, intended to train able yet docile hands who would provide cheap, unskilled labour to the colonial economy. The inherent flaw in the confinement of the majority of the population to the unskilled labour category unravelled in the 1970s and the 1980s, with internal and external events contributing to an increasing shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labour. The mining industry, in putting forth training initiatives to curb these labour shortages, did not, however, fundamentally deviate from the educational policy set out by the colonial administration. The mines insisted that the solution to the labour shortages was the provision of education to the indigenous population and ‘in most cases, practical rather than academic’ education, a continuation of, rather than a significant break from, prior education policies. Technical and vocational education was thus emphasised by both the colonial administration and the industry to subjugate indigenous labour to its place in the colonial economy.
Notes
1 J. Noble, ‘Education in Namibia’ (MA dissertation, University of Nairobi, 1977), p. 32.
2 Definition of vocational education, Collins Dictionary (n.d.), available at https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/vocational-education, retrieved 18 September 2020.
3 A. Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010). Or, as the Phelps–Stokes Commission Report of 1922 puts it, to ‘produce vocational teachers or mechanics [for] the industrial activities of the colony’, cited in J. Turner, ‘Planning Technical and Vocational Training: The Case of Namibia’, The Vocational Aspect of Education, 45, 3 (1993), p. 285.
4 L.D. Weyand, ‘What is Industrial Education?’, American Journal of Sociology, 30, 6 (1925), p. 652.
5 C. Zirkle, ‘Vocational and Technical Education’, Oxford Bibliographies (2017), available at https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756810/obo-9780199756810-0068.xml, retrieved 18 September 2020.
6 Namibia was known as German South West Africa. Under South African rule, the territory was known as South West Africa and later SWA/Namibia.
7 Carl Schlettwein, quoted in Noble, ‘Education in Namibia’, p. 53.
8 J. Zollman, ‘Becoming a Good Farmer – Becoming a Good Farm Worker: On Colonial Educational Policies in Germany and German South-West Africa, circa 1890 to 1918’, in D. Matasci, H.B. Jerónimo and H. Gonçalves Dores (eds), Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 135.
9 United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN), Namibia: Perspectives for National Reconstruction and Development (Lusaka, UNIN, 1986), p. 507.
10 H.F. Verwoerd, quoted in W.J. Pomeroy, Apartheid, Imperialism, and African Freedom (New York, International Publishers, 1986), p. 19.
11 D. Matasci et al., ‘Introduction: Historical Trajectories of Education and Development in (Post)Colonial Africa’ in Matasci et al. (eds), Education and Development, p. 20.
12 R.B. Fosdick, Adventure in Giving: The Story of the General Education Board, a Foundation Established by John D. Rockefeller (New York, Harper & Row, 1962), cited in S. Yamada, ‘Educational Borrowing as Negotiation: Re-examining the Influence of the American Black Industrial Education Model on British Colonial Education in Africa’, Comparative Education, 44, 1 (2008), p. 27.
13 Zollman, ‘Becoming a Good Farmer’, p. 138.
14 These organisations were the Southern Labour Organisation (SLO) and the Northern Labour Organisation (NLO), both of which had been established in the earlier period of the South African occupation. The SLO recruited contract labourers for the diamond mines in the south, from Ovamboland. The NLO recruited contract labourers from the Okavango for the mines in the northern region (namely Tsumeb) and for the farms. See J. Silvester (ed.), Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History (Windhoek, University of Namibia Press, 2015).
15 SWANLA was replaced by labour bureaux in response to the demands of workers following the 1971/72 general workers’ strike. See A.D. Cooper, ‘The Institutionalization of Contract Labour in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25, 1 (1999), pp. 121–38.
16 M. O’Callaghan, Namibia: The Effects of Apartheid on Culture and Education (Paris, UNESCO, 1977), p. 118.
17 Ibid.
18 G. Tötemeyer, Namibia Old and New: Traditional and Modern Leaders in Ovamboland (London, Hurst, 1978), p. 23.
19 C. Cohen, ‘The Natives Must First Become Good Workmen: Formal Educational Provision in German South West and East Africa Compared’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 1 (1993), pp. 115–34.
20 H.F. Verwoerd, quoted in F. Nekhwevha, ‘No Matter How Long the Night, the Day is Sure to Come: Culture and Education Transformation in Post-Colonial Namibia and Post-Apartheid South Africa’, International Review of Education, 45, 5/6 (1999), p. 495.
21 The Bantu Education Act, No. 47 of 1953, adopted in South Africa, was also applicable in South West Africa.
22 J. Davies, ‘Capital, State and Educational Reform in South Africa’, in P. Kallaway (ed.), Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1984), p. 346.
23 The Engineering Manufacturers’ Association (Windhoek), summary of order book level and wage survey of members of the association, February 1978, p. 2.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 4th Annual Report (1982), p. 4. The annual reports are to be found in University of Cape Town, Jagger Library Special Collections BA 622.05CHAs.90/66.
27 Ibid., p. 4.
28 Cooper, ‘The Institutionalization of Contract Labour in Namibia’, p. 125.
29 G. Lanning and M. Mueller, Africa Undermined: A History of the Mining Companies and the Underdevelopment of Africa (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979), p. 469.
30 C. Cowley, ‘Valombola – A Demonstration of Faith in the Future’, South West Africa Annual (1980), p. 125.
31 Ibid.
32 Cooper, ‘The Institutionalization of Contract Labour in Namibia’, p. 125; R.J.B. Moorsom, ‘Workers Consciousness and the 1971–1972 Contract Workers Strike’, South African Labour Bulletin, 4, 1/2 (1978), p. 124.
33 Cooper, ‘The Institutionalization of Contract Labour in Namibia’, p. 125.
34 Lanning and Mueller, Africa Undermined, p. 469.
35 R.S. Jaster, South Africa in Namibia: The Botha Strategy (Lanham, University Press of America, 1985).
36 UN Security Council Resolution 435 (1978) of 29 September 1978, available at http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/435, retrieved 12 August 2020.
37 Viewed as such, particularly, by the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and the UN Council for Namibia, established by the UN General Assembly as the caretaker government in 1967.
38 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 3rd Annual Report (1981), p. 2. University of Cape Town, Jagger Library Special Collections BA 622.05CHAs.90/66.
39 In terminating the South African mandate over Namibia in 1966, the UN General Assembly established the UN Council for Namibia, which, though unable to operate or directly carry out policy within the territory, issued Decree No. 1 (Protection of the Natural Resources of Namibia) in 1974, making illegal the trade in Namibia’s natural resources.
40 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 3rd Annual Report (1981), p. 2.
41 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 2nd Annual Report (1980), p. 1.
42 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 3rd Annual Report (1981), p. 1.
43 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, ‘A Working Paper on Labour Law and Labour Practice in SWA/Namibia’ (Windhoek, 1980).
44 I. Phimister, ‘Corporate Profit and Race in Central African Copper Mining, 1946–1958’, Business History Review, 85, 4 (2011), p. 761.
45 Cowley, ‘Valombola’, p. 125.
46 Richard Wood, quoted in T.P. Jepson, ‘Rio Tinto Zinc in Namibia’ (London, Christian Concern of Southern Africa, 1975), p. 1.
47 Phimister, ‘Corporate Profit’, p. 761.
48 M. Kooy, ‘The Contract Labour System and the Ovambo Crisis of 1971 in South West Africa’, p. 90. Ruth First Papers RF 2/17/12 Wits Historical Papers, Johannesburg.
49 About the Chamber of Mines of Namibia, see its website, available at https://chamberofmines.org.na, retrieved 3 August 2020.
50 Ibid.
51 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 2nd annual report (1980), p. 4.
52 M. Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1986 (Aldershot, Wildwood House, 1986), p. 110.
53 E. de Sousa Ferreira, ‘International Capital in Namibia: Tsumeb and the CDM’, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 3, 2 (1972), p. 51.
54 Davies, ‘Capital, State and Educational Reform in South Africa’, p. 342.
55 Kooy, ‘The Contract Labour System’, p. 90.
56 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, ‘A Working Paper on Labour Law and Labour Practice in SWA/Namibia’ (Windhoek, 1980), p. 17.
57 A. Guelke and S. Sievert, ‘South Africa’s Starving Work Force’, New Statesman, London, 23 March 1979, p. 3. Ruth First Papers Reel 59 Folder 2/12/9, Wits Historical Papers.
58 Pomeroy, Apartheid, Imperialism and African Freedom, p. 19.
59 Kooy, ‘The Contract Labour System’.
60 Ibid., p. 99.
61 For a list of the strikers’ demands, see, ibid. See also N. Shiweda, ‘Political Effects of the General Contract Strike 1971–72 on Owambo contract workers’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 24 (2018), pp. 59–84.
62 Africa News Service, ‘Alarm as Many White Miners Leave SWA’, Star, Johannesburg, 9 June 1976.
63 G.J. Coakley, Namibia (Washington DC, US Department of the Interior – Bureau of Mines, 1983), p. 44.
64 Ibid.
65 Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid, p. 116.
66 Africa News Service, ‘Alarm as Many White Miners leave SWA’, Star, 9 June 1976.
67 C.T. Truebody, ‘The Establishment of the Private Sector Foundation in SWA/Namibia’, SWA Annual (1982), p. 36.
68 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 4th Annual Report (1982), p. 4.
69 M. Lipton, ‘The Role of Business under Apartheid: Revisiting the Debate’, in H.E. Stolten (ed.), History Making and Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa (Uppsala, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2007), p. 296.
70 L. Chisholm, ‘Redefining Skills: Black Education in South Africa in the 1980s’, in Kallaway (ed.), Apartheid and Education, p. 402.
71 Archives of the Namibia Scientific Society (NSS) Charles T. Truebody collection (CTT): PROSWA/Namibia Foundation, ‘Concordia College: School of the Future’, News Bulletin No. 6 (March 1982), p. 4.
72 Cowley, ‘Valombola’, p. 123.
73 L. Chisholm, ‘Redefining Skills’, p. 402.
74 Noble, ‘Education in Namibia’, p. 78.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid., p. 61.
77 D. Matasci et al., ‘Introduction’, p. 6.
78 Coakley, Namibia, p. 44.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
81 De Beers, ‘Memorandum: Recruitment and Employment Policies of the Consolidated Diamond Mines’, (March 1978), p. 6. BAP 622.382 CONS Special Collections UCT.
82 NSS CTT: ‘Concordia College: School of the Future’, p. 4.
83 Ibid.
84 De Beers, ‘Memorandum: Recruitment and Employment Policies’, p. 6.
85 Coakley, Namibia, p. 44.
86 De Beers, ‘Memorandum: Recruitment and Employment Policies’, p. 6.
87 Valombola Vocational Training College, About Us: History, available at https://www.vvtc.com.na/, retrieved 19 August 2020.
88 P. Kallaway, ‘Preliminary Notes towards a Study of Labour on the Diamond Fields of Griqualand West’, Ruth First Papers RG/2/16/22 Wits Historical Papers, Johannesburg.
89 De Beers, ‘Memorandum: Recruitment and Employment Policies’, p. 1.
90 Ibid.
91 Rössing Uranium, Weekly Newsletter, Windhoek, 4 August 1978, p. 2 (emphasis added).
92 Rössing Uranium Ltd, An Introduction to Rössing: The Largest Uranium Mine in the World (Windhoek, Rössing Uranium Ltd, 1980), p. 10.
93 Rössing Uranium, Weekly Newsletter, 4 August 1978, p. 2.
94 Rössing Uranium Ltd, An Introduction to Rössing, p. 11.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid., p. 10.
97 Ibid.
98 M.W. Ellis, The Mineral Industry of Namibia (Washington, US Department of the Interior, 1983), p. 183.
99 Coakley, Namibia, p. 44.
100 Lanning and Mueller, Africa Undermined, pp. 225.
101 Ibid. See also Phimister, ‘Corporate Profit’, and J. Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999), p. 9.
102 Rio Tinto Zinc’s Palabora copper mine in South Africa, for example, produced uranium as a by-product and would thus have experienced an improvement in its uranium production even as copper prices decreased.
103 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 9th Annual Report (1987), p. iv.
104 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 2nd Annual Report (1980), p. 7.
105 The above-mentioned funding had been requested by the principal of the Valombola Technical Institute on behalf of the students.
106 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 2nd Annual Report (1980), p. 7.
107 A challenge that was persistent until independence, as noted in J. Turner, ‘Planning Technical and Vocational Education and Training’.
108 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 4th Annual Report (1982), p. 3.
109 Ibid., p. 4.
110 Coakley, Namibia, p. 44.
111 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 4th Annual Report (1982), p. 4.
112 Ibid.
113 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 8th Annual Report (1986).
114 Ibid., p. 15.
115 Ibid., p. 12.
116 Chamber of Mines of SWA/Namibia, 4th Annual Report (1982), p. 3.
117 Ibid.
118 NSS CTT: ‘Concordia College: School of the Future’, p. 4.
119 Ibid.
120 Richard Wood, quoted in Jepson, ‘Rio Tinto Zinc in Namibia’, p. 1.
121 ‘Rössing to Donate School of Mining Technology to Namibia’, Rössing News, Windhoek, 16 March 1990.