Children taught only Swapo history at school – Swartbooi

Landless People’s Movement (LPM) leader Bernadus Swartbooi says the history Namibian children are taught at school is only from Swapo’s perspective.

This has led to many young people growing up with a limited awareness of both Namibian politics and history.

Swartbooi said this in an interview with Hennok TV on Sunday.

“Our young children are not receiving the education they need for liberation. They are not getting the information for empowerment, self-reflection and building a sense of pride about our society.

“It is a selective history of the nation, including some oral history and a narrative that suits Swapo,” he said.

“If you don’t read those books, you will find this leads to an incomplete understanding of history,” he said.

Swartbooi has in past media reports called Namibia’s education system outdated.

Although the apartheid education system was flawed, there was a collective societal effort to raise awareness of the common enemy and issues of justice, fairness and freedom, he said. “If you didn’t get anything at school, you would get it outside. School is supposed to build your consciousness and your ability to be a critical, self-reflective person.

“That is not done in the current school curriculum or set-up. In society, many people are compromised,” he said.

Swartbooi said the LPM has started challenging these narratives quite successfully, arguing that some of the heroes celebrated by Swapo were not necessarily exemplary leaders.

“As the LPM, we began to challenge those narratives quite successfully by pointing out that some of the heroes you are celebrating were actually not very good leaders.

“Some of them were just 19 years old and projecting them as so powerful is questionable.

“We offered a narrative about our history and the common human contributions from all sectors of society, which allowed others to start to questioning, saying Swapo is not as glorious as people have proclaimed,” he said.

‘UNGRATEFUL’

Responding to Swartbooi’s allegations, Charles Mubita, Swapo’s deputy secretary for information and mobilisation, said the LPM leader is being ungrateful because he learned politics from Swapo.

“Swapo cannot legitimise or give credit to what he said, because Swartbooi himself was once a young person and he learned about history and politics from Swapo.

“He should be grateful to learn from Swapo. He is ungrateful – his political career started with Swapo, so he is hypocritical.”