Educational rights for indigenous communities in Botswana and Namibia

Abstract

The indigenous peoples of Botswana and Namibia, the San, have the lowest educational attainment rates of any population in both countries, despite various efforts to incorporate them into mainstream education systems. Both countries are signatories of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes several references to education. This document, and other rights mechanisms, address both the right to access mainstream educational institutions that respect and accommodate the languages and cultures of indigenous children, and the right to ‘establish and control their own educational systems and institutions, providing education in their own languages in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning’ (Article 14). This article provides an overview of the current state of both of these aspects of educational rights for indigenous peoples in Botswana and Namibia. What is the best way to improve educational options for San communities in southern Africa? Can a rights-based approach be effective? Does an indigenous rights perspective have anything to add to the debate? This paper examines these questions, and links rights-based arguments with other approaches to education. It argues that a variety of approaches are needed to fully address the complex issues confronting San communities today. A sophisticated understanding of indigenous rights acknowledges this, and if used strategically, could provide a comprehensive and productive approach to educational issues for San communities.

Keywords:

• indigenous rights
• human rights
• educational rights
• San
• UNDRIP

Acknowledgements

This article is informed by long-term research in southern Africa on educational issues. It was written during a research fellowship in comparative indigenous studies at the University of Tromsø, which allowed me to make several trips back to southern Africa over the course of the past three years to gather updated material, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. Special thanks to Sidsel Saugestad and Nigel Crawhall for their careful reading of this paper and their informed suggestions. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer for very constructive comments. Lesle Jansen at the Legal Assistance Centre, and Ben-Begbie Clench at the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities, both provided important insight into the potential for indigenous rights instruments and arguments to be used strategically in southern Africa. And I acknowledge the San communities and individuals who have shared with me their perspectives over the years. All of these noted have shaped my own understandings of the issues; the arguments as they are presented here are, of course, my own.

Notes

Other terms used are Bushmen, or (in Botswana) Basarwa. None of these terms are the peoples' own names for themselves, however, and generally they prefer to use their own terms such as Ju|'hoansi, Khwe, Naro, or !Xun. In this article the term San is used when referring to the larger grouping, as is the standard practice of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities of Southern Africa (WIMSA). See also J. Hays and M. Biesele, ‘Indigenous Rights in Southern Africa: International Mechanisms and Local Contexts’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

Botswana has about 46,000 San, and Namibia 38,000, according to the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, http://www.wimsanet.org (accessed 22 Novermber 2010). According to WIMSA there are also 7000 in Angola and 6000 in South Africa, with small communities of a few hundred in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Willemien le Roux, Torn Apart: San Children as Change Agents in a Process of Assimilation (Windhoek: WIMSA, 1999); James Suzman, Regional Assessment of the Status of the San in Southern Africa: An Introduction (Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre, 2001); Jennifer Hays, ‘Education, Rights and Survival for the Nyae Nyae Ju|’hoansi: Illuminating Global and Local Discourses' (PhD dissertation, State University of New York, University at Albany, 2007).

These have been well-documented; see for example Ulla Kann, Robert Hitchcock and Nomtuse Mbere, Let them Talk: A Review of the Accelerated Remote Area Development Program (Gaborone: Ministry of Local Government and Lands and Oslo: Norwegian Agency for Development and Cooperation, 1990); Ulla Kann, Where the Sand is the Book: Education for Everyone in the Nyae Nyae Area (Consultancy Report for the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation in Namibia and the Swedish International Development Agency, 1991); Patti Swarts and Roger Avenstrup, Report on Preliminary Survey of Education for Bushman-Speaking Learners (Windhoek: Namibian Institute for Educational Development, 1995); Lucky Tshireletso, ‘“They Are the Government's Children”: School and Community Relations in a Remote Area Dweller (Basarwa) Settlement in Kweneng District, Botswana’, International Journal of Educational Development 17, no. 2 (1997), 173–88. le Roux, Torn Apart; Willemien le Roux The Challenges of Change: A Tracer Study of San Preschool Children in Botswana (The Hague: Bernard Van Leer Foundation, 2002); Hays, Education, Rights and Survival for the Nyae Nyae Ju|'hoansi; Velina Ninkova, ‘Challenges and Accomplishments of Gqaina, A Primary School for Ju|’hoan Children in Omaheke, Namibia' (Masters Thesis, University of Tromsø, Norway, 2009).

Rodney Hopson, ‘Language Rights and the San in Namibia: A Fragile and Ambiguous but Necessary Proposition’, The International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 15 no. 1 (2011), this issue.

As of 2010, no former village school student had gone beyond grade 7; the majority drop out in grade 4 or 5. From personal fieldnotes, July 2010.

See also S. Saugestad, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms of Indigenous Rights in Botswana’, The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue; and R. Hitchcock, M. Sapignoli and W. Babchuk, ‘What about our Rights? Settlements, Subsistence and Livelihood Security among Central Kalahan San and Bakgalagadi’, The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

The Remote Area Development Programme is under the Ministry of Local Government, who thus has responsibility for hostel construction, stocking, staffing, and so on, as well as other aspects of education for those classified as Remote Area Dwellers. The schools, however, are under the Ministry of Education. This division of responsibility can make it difficult to develop a cohesive approach to the linked problems at school and hostels, for San children with RADP support.

Le Roux, Torn Apart; Le Roux, Challenges of Change; Thuto Isago, ‘Trust’. Report on Survey of Children Aged between 5 and 16 Not in School, November 2009, Gantsi District, unpublished survey, 2010.

Government of Botswana, National Census, 2001 (Gaborone: Government Printer, 2003).

Setswana is a Bantu language. Minority languages in Botswana include other Bantu languages, such as Kalanga (the largest minority language group in Botswana), Seyei, Sekgalagadi and Otjiherero, and San languages, including Ju|'hoansi, Naro, and Khwedam. Overall, Bantu-speaking minorities have fewer problems with education in general and the transition to Setswana, though there are variations within each group.

Recent government figures for Namibia show, for example, that out of the total enrollment of San learners in Namibia's schools (6942), 67 per cent are in lower primary (grades 1–3), and 21.6 per cent in upper primary (4–6); only seven per cent of all San students in school are in secondary school; of these less than one per cent are in senior secondary. Education Management Information Systems, Education Statistics 2008 (Windhoek: Ministry of Education and Culture, 2009), 40. In Botswana, a recent (2009) survey by Thuto Isago, cited above, found that, for example, in the freehold farms of Gantsi Farm Block – where most of the farm workers are San – 60 per cent of children aged 6–10 and 55 per cent of children aged 11–15 were not in school.

See Hitchcock, et al., ‘What about Our Rights?’; and Saugestad, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms’.

Bihela Sekere, ‘Minority Education in Botswana: Identity and Challenges’, Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education (forthcoming).

Splash Moronga, ‘The Death of Kelapile Kayawe of Tobere Village in the North East of the Okavango District’, unpublished report, 2009. This was not the first such occurrence, in 1999 a child ran away from a hostel and was killed by a lion while trying to return to her village. The children are not naive; they know the dangers and choose to face them rather than stay at the hostels.

A new primary school, financed by the Chinese government, was just opened in January 2010; a new hostel for primary learners is under construction.

Eureka Mokibelo, Motshegaletau Workshop Report, submitted to UBTromsø, 25 February 2008.

Saugested, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms’.

http://www.right-to-education.org/node/233 (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No.11: Indigenous Children and their Rights under the Convention (Geneva: UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009).

Richard Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Margarie Shostack, !Nisa, Story of a !Kung Woman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Renee Sylvain, ‘“We Work to Have Life”: Ju|’hoan Women, Work and Survival in the Omaheke Region, Namibia' (PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 1999); Willemien le Roux and Alison White, eds, Voices of the San (Cape Town: Kuela Publishers, 2005).

R. Sylvain, ‘At the Intersections: San Women and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa’, The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

Le Roux, Torn Apart; Kathleen Heugh, ‘Theory and Practice: Language Education Models in Africa’, in Optimizing Learning and Education in Africa: The Language Factor. A Stock-taking Research on Mother Tongue and Bilingual Education in Sub Saharan Africa (Windhoek: Association for the Development of Education in Africa, 2006), 56–84; Jennifer Hays, For the Benefit of All: Mother Tongue Education for Southern African Minorities (A Comprehensive Summary Report from a Regional Conference on Multilingualism in Southern African Education. Gaborone Botswana, 1–2 June 2005. Windhoek: WIMSA); Gregory Kamwendo, Dudu Jankie and Andy Chebanne, eds, Multilingualism in Education and Communities in Southern Africa (Gaborone: UBTromso, 2009).

See also Joel Spring, The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition, and Guidelines (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000).

World Declaration on Education for All: Article I – Meeting Basic Learning Needs (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990).

Spring, The Universal Right to Education, 4.

For example: Murray Wax, Rosalie Wax and Robert Dumont, Formal Education in an American Indian Community: Peer Society and the Failure of Minority Education (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1964); Henry Trueba, Grace Pung Guthrie and Kathryn Hu-Pei Au, eds, Culture and the Bilingual Classroom: Studies in Classroom Ethnography (Rowley: Newbury House Publishers, 1981); Susan Phillips, The Invisible Culture: Communication in Classroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (New York: Longman, 1983); Sheila Aikman, ‘Territory, Indigenous Education and Cultural Maintenance: The Case of the Arakmbut of South-Eastern Peru’, Prospects 25, no. 4 (1995): 593–608; Jerry Lipka, Gerald V. Hohatt and the Cuulistet Group, Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yup'ik Eskimo Examples (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998); Teresa McCarty, A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002).

Coolongotta Statement on Indigenous Rights in Education, World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education, Hilo, Hawai‘i, 6 August 1999 (section 1.3.1).

Oscar Kawagley, ‘Tradition and Education: The World Made Seamless Again’, in Science and Native American Communities, ed. Keith James (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 51–6.

Coolongotta Statement, section 2.2.4.

Howard Klepper, ‘Mandatory Rights and Compulsory Education’, Law and Philosophy 15 (1996): 149–58.

See the UN Declaration on Human Rights, Article 21.

See Sylvain ‘We Work to Have Life’; Suzman Things from the Bush: A Contemporary History of the Omaheke Bushmen (Switzerland: P. Schlettwein Publishing, 2001).

Le Roux, Torn Apart; Hays, Education, Rights and Survival; Ninkova, Challenges and Accomplishments.

http://www.right-to-education.org (accessed 22 November 2010).

Katarina Tomaševski, ‘Has the Right to Education a Future Within the United Nations? A Behind-the-Scenes Account by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education 1998–2004’, Human Rights Law Review 5, no. 2 (2005): 208.

Katarina Tomaševski, ‘Not Education for All, Only for Those Who Can Pay: The World Bank's Model for Financing Primary Education’, Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal (2005), http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2005_1/Tomaševski (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

Ingrid Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education: Rights, Capabilities and Human Capital’, Theory and Research in Education 4, no. 1 (2006): 69–84.

World Declaration on Education for All: Article I – Meeting Basic Learning Needs.

Ibid., 70.

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, ‘Marvellous Human Rights Rhetoric and Grim Realities: Language Rights in Education’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1, no. 3 (2002): 180.

Ibid., 196.

Amartya Sen, Inequality Re-examined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999).

Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987).

Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India, Economic Development and Social Opportunity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’, 80 (emphasis added).

Ibid., 83.

Heugh, ‘Theory and Practice: Language Education Models in Africa’, 56–84.

Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), Workshop Report on the Formalization of Traditional Knowledge of Tracking in Namibia (Cape Town: IPACC, 2009).

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 14:1.

Saugestad, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms’.

Lesle Janson at the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) in Windhoek emphasised this point in personal communication (28 April 2010); this conversation with her triggered a shift in emphasis in my own perspective and argument.

Spring, The Universal Right to Education, 17.

Ibid.

These include the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvL), the Icelandic Development Agency (ICEIDA), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), The Namibian Association of Norway (NAMAS), and Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED).

!Kung speakers live primarily in Western Tsumkwe, Namibia. This language is sometimes confused with !Xun, speakers of a related, but different language, originally from Angola.

For more information, visit http://www.wimsanet.org/; and http://www.kalaharipeoples.org/projects.html (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

IPACC, Workshop Report on the Formalization of Traditional Knowledge of Tracking in Namibia; Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), ‘Southern Africa Regional Workshop on the Formalization of the Traditional Knowledge of Tracking’ (Cape Town: IPACC, 2007); Megan Biesele, personal communication; Stacey Main, personal communication. See also http://www.cybertracker.org/ (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

Lesle Jansen, personal communication, 28 April 2010.

For more information see http://www.kuru.co.bw/ (accessed 22 November 2010).

Ibid.

http://www.kuru.co.bw/bokamosoorg.html (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

For more description of these and other projects see http://www.kuru.co.bw/Home.html (accessed 22 November 2010).

At http://www.kuru.co.bw/letloa.html (accessed 22 November 2010).

Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’.

Hopson, ‘Language Rights and the San’.

Ibid.

Namibian government officials have recently indicated a willingness to consider indigenous rights arguments; if this happens an even stronger push could be made to increase access to mother tongue education in government schools. At the time of writing it remains to see how these statements will be translated into action.

Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’.

N. Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.