Meanwhile, there have been moves to form a new organisation for Namibian students, to include all the institutions at which they are studying in both South Africa and Namibia. (There is no university in Namibia itself, while about 1,500 Namibian students, black and white, are registered at South African universities, notably University College of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the North, and the universities of Fort Hare, Zululand and Witwatersrand).
Student representatives, meeting in Windhoek on 2 July under the auspices of the Namibian Council of Churches, agreed on the need for a broad representative organisation. It might retain the name 'NAMSO', after the existing Namibian Students Organisation, formed in 1975 and now active mainly at the University of the Western Cape. The meeting agreed to set up a communications committee at Fort Hare, where a Namibian Students Association in broad agreement with NAMSO was set up in 1983.
A national Namibian student organisation faces problems of wide geographical dispersal and poor communications between the various institutions, according to one student. Institutions in Namibia also have a more restrictive attitude than their South African counterparts; the general regulations of the Academy for Tertiary Education in Windhoek, for example, state that student associations and clubs must first be recognised by the Students' Representative Council before they will be allowed to function, and their constitutions, regulations and programmes of activity officially approved.
A ecumenical conference for students, organised by the Council of Churches, was held at the Döbra Roman Catholic Training School from 10–14 July 1983. A committee was elected to arrange a national students' conference during the December/January vacation.
