At least 15 Namibian students were injured when armed police stormed onto the campus of the Academy for tertiary education in Windhoek on 2 March to break up a student demonstration. About 100 students were demanding an end to Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at the institution. Afrikaans-medium instruction is one of many issues which have been a source of conflict at Namibian schools and educational institutions over the past few years.
The demonstration followed a mass meeting to discuss a resolution by the Student Representative Council calling for all subjects to be taught in English. Students at the meeting called a class boycott after the rector rejected the call. The students gathered in front of the main lecture hall and refused to disperse.
The Police Task Force, a militarised unit based in Windhoek, was brought onto the campus at the request of the rector. Armed with shot-guns, the police advanced on the demonstrators, fired a volley of rubber bullets and then chased the fleeing students, assaulting them with sjamboks.
One student, Charles TUBALIKE, said that he had been bundled into a police vehicle where he was beaten and whipped and then left unconscious on the outskirts of Windhoek.
The attack was strongly condemned by the SWAPO Youth League and four Namibian trade unions aligned to the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW). The unions issued a joint statement assuring the students of 'solitude and support for their struggle'.
The Namibian National Students Organisation (NANSO), which was active in the Academy protests, has been leading a national campaign against Afrikaans-medium instruction since the formation of the organisation in 1984. As a result of pressure, some schools controlled by the Department of National Education switched to English-medium instruction this year.
The language issue was one of many discussed at a NANSO consultative conference held in Okahandja north of Windhoek in January this year. More than 200 students from schools and other institutions around Namibia, as well as Namibians studying in South Africa, attended the gathering. Participants were especially concerned about interference by the South African armed forces in schools, and declared that 1988 would be the 'Year of Decisive Action Against Militarisation'. The organisation called for the removal of army bases located near to schools in the north, for a national campaign against conscription, and for the independence of Namibia under UN resolution 435.
A similar stand against conscription and the para-military cadets system in schools was adopted by the Vaalgras Youth Association at its annual congress at the end of last year.
Army interference in schools was given as one of the reasons for a further drop in examination pass rates at black secondary schools in 1987, along with continuing inequalities in funding, and shortages of qualified teachers, equipment and classrooms. Less than a third of pupils passed the matriculation exam which marks the end of secondary schooling; in contrast, in schools controlled by the Administration for Whites the pass rate was over 90 per cent.
