Challenging the Status Quo: Reclaiming Indigenous Knowledge through Namibia’s Postcolonial Education System

Abstract

Although Namibia has been independent for more than two decades (1990–2014), the school curriculum remains essentially Eurocentric despite rhetoric on educational reform. Similar to other African countries, Western ideological power continues to dominate postcolonial education, even though political power rests in the hands of African leaders. Employing George Sefa Dei’s anticolonial discursive framework, this article presents a critical analysis of postcolonial education in Namibia and of its failure to adopt a diverse and culturally sensitive school curriculum. This article concludes that, in future reforms, the Namibian education system must incorporate indigenous knowledge not only to preserve this knowledge but also to recognize the multilogicality of knowledge production and its uses in diverse cultural contexts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yonah H. Matemba

Dr. Yonah H. Matemba is a senior lecturer in Social Sciences Education at the University of the West of Scotland, UK, where he has been teaching since 2011. He is the author of more than 20 journal articles, book chapters, book reviews and books. He has presented many papers at conference around the world. His most recent articles have appeared in Journal of Moral Education (2010), Arts and Humanities in Higher Education (2011), Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education (2013), Journal of Beliefs and Values (2013), Religious Education Journal of Australia (2013 & 2014), History of Education (2014), British Journal of Religious Education (2014) and Religious Education (2015).

John Makala Lilemba

Dr. John Makala Lilemba was until December 2013 a senior lecturer in education at the University of Namibia. In January 2014 he joined the University of Barotseland as a visiting research scholar at the University of Barotseland, Zambia. He is the 1996 winner of Pamwe Literature Award in siLozi Short Stories and author of three secondary school textbooks, and mostly recently a book on the early history of the Mafwe entitled The Odyssey of the Mamili Mafwe Royal Dynasty (2014). His most recent article has appeared in Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters.