More than 100 students are reported to have been expelled from schools in Namibia due to their connections with SWAPO. On 17 October, 90 students, most of them in their first year of teachers' training, were expelled from the Ongwediva High School after a SWAPO public meeting had been held there a week before. Apparently teachers (many of whom are members of the South African Defence Force under the army's "hearts and minds" programme to improve public relations) asked students not to attend the meeting. Three more students had previously been expelled for boycotting a Turnhalle "report-back" meeting held on the school campus.
According to SWAPO, 40 of the 90 expelled were later re-admitted, five - Sakeus Shivute, Hosea Mbandeka, M. Wuanga, C. Iita and another - were detained, and the rest had crossed the border. Sakeus Shivute and Hosea Mbandeka have since submitted evidence of their torture in detention to the Windhoek Supreme Court.
In November, 19 students were expelled from the high school in Okakarara after membership cards of SWAPO, SWANU and the Namibia Black Students Organisation (NABSO) had been found in their possession. As at Ongwediva members of the SA Defence Force have been teaching at Okakarara.
In a speech given in Oshakati to members of the Ovambo Legislative Council and tribal administration, the SWAPO Administrator-General Justice Steyn has announced that Bantu Education is to be "scrapped" from the beginning of 1978. All population groups are to be educated according to a single country-wide plan or curriculum. Separate schools for each racial group will remain however, particularly in the government sector. There is also no indication of any change in the government's financial allocations for the education of different "population groups". In line with a decision taken by the SWAPO Executive Committee in November 1977, all private schools and creches in Namibia are now at liberty to accept children of different races if they so wish. Government subsidies, however, will only be paid on the basis of the number of white children at a school.
