Educational rights for indigenous communities in Botswana and Namibia

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2011.529695

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Educational rights for indigenous communitiesin Botswana and Namibia

Jennifer Hays!

Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromsø, Norway

The indigenous peoples of Botswana and Namibia, the San, have the lowest educationalattainment rates of any population in both countries, despite various efforts toincorporate them into mainstream education systems. Both countries are signatoriesof the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which includes severalreferences to education. This document, and other rights mechanisms, address boththe right to access mainstream educational institutions that respect and accommodatethe languages and cultures of indigenous children, and the right to ‘establish andcontrol their own educational systems and institutions, providing education in theirown languages in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching andlearning’ (Article 14). This article provides an overview of the current state of both ofthese aspects of educational rights for indigenous peoples in Botswana and Namibia.What is the best way to improve educational options for San communities in southernAfrica? Can a rights-based approach be effective? Does an indigenous rightsperspective have anything to add to the debate? This paper examines these questions,and links rights-based arguments with other approaches to education. It argues that avariety of approaches are needed to fully address the complex issues confronting Sancommunities today. A sophisticated understanding of indigenous rights acknowledgesthis, and if used strategically, could provide a comprehensive and productiveapproach to educational issues for San communities.

Keywords: indigenous rights; human rights; educational rights; San; UNDRIP

Introduction

Following the signing of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights, indigenous peoples aremoving into a new position on the world stage as actors with increasing voice and influencein global issues. As indigenous communities begin the process of shifting from a strugglefor the recognition of their rights, to strategies for implementing rights, a new set of issuescomes to the fore. How are these rights defined legally? How are they understood andenacted at the local and national level? How can indigenous communities enter into nego-tiations with other development actors equipped with the understandings needed to asserttheir rights, and appropriate implementation strategies? How can indigenous peoplemanage their own participation in development processes?

For indigenous peoples, many of these issues are linked to education. Negotiation withpowerful development actors – including national governments, donor agencies, large-scale development projects and corporations – requires an understanding of the processes

ISSN 1364-2987 print/ISSN 1744-053X online# 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13642987.2011.529695http://www.informaworld.com

!Email: [email protected]

The International Journal of Human RightsVol. 15, No. 1, January 2011, 127–153

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of government, development, industry and the global economy and political structures.Very often the values and goals of these institutions differ radically from the cultural priori-ties of indigenous communities. Indigenous people need access to the languages and othercommunicative skills that will allow them to enter into development discourses on moreequal terms, to negotiate with more powerful development actors and to make the bestchoices for themselves as individuals and communities. It is commonly assumed that itis through the formal education system that these skills can be best accessed.

As is increasingly recognised, however, indigenous children and their communitiesaround the world have suffered enormously from (sometimes forced) participation inunsympathetic – and often abusive – education systems. Participation in colonialisteducational institutions often entails a shift in focus away from their own culture, andcan undermine indigenous identity and community relationships. Effective educationmust be able to help bridge current cultural and economic gaps – but not at the expenseof cultural integrity. What kind of education is needed? Can the UN Declaration on theRights of Indigenous Peoples, and other rights-based documents, contribute to achievingthe educational goals of indigenous communities? Is a human rights approach the bestway to address indigenous education issues? What approach will work in southernAfrica? For the San,1 indigenous peoples of Namibia and Botswana, these questions areimmediate, and of critical importance.

Section I of this paper, ‘Background: regional dynamics and indigenous rights’,provides a brief overview of the educational situation of the San in Botswana andNamibia, and will illustrate the interconnectedness of education and other aspects of indi-genous rights. Section II, ‘The right to education and indigenous peoples’, first examines ofthe ‘right to education’, highlighting the emphasis on formal education, followed by a briefdiscussion of the historical experiences of indigenous peoples in formal education systems.As a result of these common experiences, indigenous peoples have emphasised in severaldocuments their right to educational self-determination, most strongly articulated in the2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); thearguments in these documents is also outlined. The right to education is often also linkedwith compulsory education, and this paper examines how a compulsory ‘right’ to educationsquares with indigenous historical experience, and indigenous rights as defined today.

Section III, ‘Capital, rights and capabilities – approaches to education and develop-ment’, asks, what is the most effective way to achieve educational rights for indigenouspeoples – particularly in southern Africa? Three approaches are outlined, followed by a dis-cussion of their applicability to educational improvement for indigenous communities insouthern Africa. It is suggested that an effective indigenous rights approach can strategi-cally integrate all three. Finally, Section IV, ‘Current efforts to improve indigenouseducational options in Botswana and Namibia’, highlights some current and ongoingefforts in southern Africa to address San educational issues, and examines them from anindigenous rights perspective.

I. Background: regional dynamics and indigenous rights

Both Namibia and Botswana have a focus on providing education to all of their citizens,including San communities. In both Botswana and Namibia,2 San communities have thelowest levels of participation in formal education systems.3 There are many interrelatedreasons why this is so, including those related to poverty, social stigmatisation, abusiveand otherwise unfriendly school and hostel environments, the problems associated withlearning in a foreign language and culture, a relative lack of examples of successful San

128 J. Hays


students, and the lack of correspondence between formal education and real economicopportunity in the areas where San are living. For different communities, different issuestake priority – but the similarities that underlie educational challenges for San communitiesacross the region are striking. Also striking is the similarity between these challenges andthose faced by other indigenous communities in different parts of the world; I will return tothis point later.

Literacy (especially in the dominant languages), numeracy and other skills learned atthe formal schools are increasingly necessary for entry into the labour market, as well asto participate in decision making processes that affect them. In general, San parents wanttheir children to obtain these skills, which are currently accessible primarily through theformal education system. Unfortunately, San communities across southern Africa experi-ence serious problems with education; the nature of these problems will be detailed inthe sections below.4

Namibia

Namibia is a multilingual country and has a strong focus on language in education. TheMinistry of Education, in conjunction with the Namibian Institute for Educational Devel-opment (NIED) are committed to developing educational materials in the major Sanlanguages at least up until grade 3, with a long-term intention of going higher if resourcesare available (although funding for this is not a priority; see also Hopson this volume).5 Sofar some educational materials are available for grades 1–3 in three San languages, Ju/’hoansi, Khwedam and !Kung. At the Village Schools in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy ofTsumkwe district, in northeastern Namibia, San teachers teach Ju|’hoansi children intheir own language up until grade 3. The village schools are an important and highlyregarded example of the government’s efforts to provide mother tongue and culturallyappropriate education for San children.

In many ways, Namibia has the most progressive educational approach of all thesouthern African countries in which San reside. Despite this, most San students still donot go far in the formal education system, for various reasons. Even the village schools’‘graduates’ have an extremely high dropout rate from the local government schools,which they enter in grade 4.6 This is also the grade when the language of instructionswitches to English in the Namibian education system (see Hopson this volume for adiscussion of Namibian language policies).

Botswana

Botswana has invested heavily in their education system over the past four decades sinceindependence, and has one of the most successful education systems in Africa, providingup to 10 years of compulsory basic education (ages 6–15). The Remote Area DevelopmentProgramme (RADP), under the Ministry of Local Government, caters specifically for chil-dren from remote and impoverished communities.7 There are no official figures illustratingthe percentage of RADs who are San. However it is common knowledge that most of the‘remote area dwellers’ (RADs) served by the programme are San; a common estimate is thatmore than 80 per cent of the RADS nationwide are San, and that this number approaches100 per cent in some areas. The government of Botswana earmarks resources specifically toprovide RAD children with the opportunity to attend government schools, including build-ing and staffing hostels to accommodate children from remote areas.8 Unfortunately, theseschools, and the hostels, tend to be very unsympathetic places for minority students. San

The International Journal of Human Rights 129


students at boarding schools express feelings of pain and alienation that are at times acute,and students frequently report abuse by hostel staff and other students, poor hostel con-ditions, stigma experienced from identification as ‘RADs’ and a general lack of cultural sen-sitivity in the classroom and the hostel environment.9

Explicit government policy in Botswana states that education must be only in English orSetswana, the dominant language spoken as a mother tongue by approximately 82% of thepopulation.10 For speakers of minority languages,11 there is no mother tongue education.All subjects are taught in a foreign language, cultural representations in curriculummaterials represent the perspective of the dominant group, and teaching styles arederived from the dominant culture. Government assistance to RADs is specifically non-ethnic, and no special provision is made for children who do not have Setswana as theirhome language.

Regional circumstances

In both countries, as well as other parts of southern Africa, San children and their commu-nities live in a variety of different circumstances. In some areas, like the Nyae NyaeConservancy, noted above, people still practice many of their traditional hunting andgathering skills and rely on them to supplement sparse income and aid from other sources.For many San children in such circumstances, the available formal education has littleimmediate relevance and drop-out rates are extremely high.12 Some San communitieshave been relocated and live either in resettlement camps or specially created villages;13

these communities are in intense transition and both the unemployment rate and substanceabuse are high; this also affects school attendance.14 In both countries, especially Botswana,many San children live with their families as farm-workers on remote farms and cattle posts,usually in very small groups (sometimes nuclear families). Options for such children areusually limited to one of two choices: beginning work on the cattle post, or attending aboarding school far from their families and only being able to visit their parents during holi-days. For young children who have lived their entire lives in a very small family setting – andfor their parents who would like to have them close by – going to a boarding school can be aterrifying prospect.

‘Terrifying’ is not an exaggeration. Recent events in Botswana have drawn some (thoughperhaps still not enough) attention to the severe abuse that can occur at the hostels. In 2006 aSan student in the Ghanzi district of Botswana, died following severe bullying by otherstudents. Less than a year later, first-time San students in the same district were taken to adifferent school than the parents were told, and for three months parents did not knowwhere their young children (ages seven to nine) were. Following these occurrences, amongothers, many San parents in that area were understandably reluctant to let their children goto school. More recently, in October of 2009, an eight-year-old girl ran away from a hostelin an effort to return home to her family. It was five days before the hostel managementrealised she was missing and took action, and by the time she was found three days latershe had died of exposure.15 This event sparked compassion and outrage among Sancommunities, their supporters and the general public. It remains to be seen, however,whether the initial reaction will spark a serious re-examination of the problematic issue ofhostels for vulnerable children like the San, especially those who are very young.

The examples discussed above are extreme cases, but problematic conditions existthroughout the region. In Tsumkwe, children as young as seven share hostel space withkids in upper grades who can be as old as 19 or 20; reports of abuse are rife.16 Highlevels of neglect and sexual abuse have been documented at hostels in Botswana.17

130 J. Hays


Overall, reports about the circumstances in the schools and hostels, from San students andother observers in both Botswana and Namibia, are not good. It is important to keep in mindthe inadequate, and sometimes abusive, circumstances under which many San children cur-rently attend school, as we move into a discussion on educational rights. First I will brieflyoutline the way that educational rights intersect with other rights discussed in this volume,specifically as they take shape in southern Africa.

Positioning education rights in relation to the other indigenous rights

As Saugestad18 points out in reference to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) courtcase, ‘there is no way a group of poor and illiterate San could have raised the case on theirown’. Education – intimately connected with literacy skills – is fundamental to the abilityof San and other marginalised groups in order for them to be able to claim recognition oftheir rights, in particular land rights. The Right to Education Project, initiated by the formerUN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education (1998–2004) Katarina Tomasevski,defines the right to education as an ‘enabling right’ in addition to being a right in itself:

If people have access to education they can develop the skills, capacity and confidence to secureother rights. Education gives people the ability to access information detailing the range of rightsthat they hold, and government’s obligations. It supports people to develop the communicationskills to demand these rights, the confidence to speak in a variety of forums, and the ability tonegotiate with a wide range of government officials and power holders.19

In that education can contribute to the ability to articulate claims for other fundamentalrights, it is connected to all aspects of indigenous rights.

Land rights and education rights go hand in hand in other important ways. A keyrecognition is that appropriate educational approaches are needed to prevent alienationfrom skills, traditions, knowledge based on their relationship with land, and access toland is needed in order to develop education approaches that make use of indigenousknowledge. In general, traditional economies of indigenous groups (most commonlyhunting and gathering, pastoralism or shifting cultivation) are closely tied to the land.The knowledge and skills connected to these survival strategies form an important partof indigenous cultural heritage. Many indigenous peoples in southern Africa want to main-tain contact with this part of their culture, but lack the access to land. Those few who havesome control over their territories, like the Ju|’hoansi of Nyae Nyae, still practice theirtraditional lifestyle, to some degree. In a recent comment on the rights of indigenouschildren, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child notes that ‘the right to exercise cul-tural rights among indigenous peoples may be closely associated with the use of traditionalterritory and the use of its resources’.20 Land rights are closely connected to cultural rights,and educational rights are intertwined with both of these aspects of indigenous rights.

The education of ‘the girl child’ is a particular focus in southern Africa, and the corre-lation between formal education and increased status for women is oft-cited. Althoughanthropological accounts over the past several decades and oral histories indicate thatmost San communities were based upon strong gender equality,21 as Sylvain22 pointsout, gender roles have shifted (or are in the process of doing so) as San communitiesbecome increasingly absorbed into surrounding social hierarchies. In Botswana andNamibia, San women are particularly vulnerable to exploitation – both as women andas minorities. Increased educational opportunities could help counter this, and non-government organisations (NGOs) working with San populations place emphasis oncreating gender equality in education. On the other hand, given the strength of women in



traditional society, educational opportunities which draw upon this history could also bevery effective in improving gender equality.

The right to education is intimately – and perhaps most obviously – intertwined withlanguage rights. The right to education in one’s own language is grounded in extensiveresearch showing that mother tongue education provides a foundation for both languagemaintenance (which many indigenous communities identify as an area of critical impor-tance for them), and the improvement of educational access (including access to newlanguages). Access to education in one’s home language is a critical part of educationalrights – and the lack of access to mother tongue education is one of the biggest educationalbarriers noted by indigenous communities.23 Although they are closely linked, it is impor-tant not to conflate them. For example, simply translating mainstream curricula into verna-cular languages is not sufficient for the provision of culturally appropriate educationalaccess for indigenous peoples and other minorities. Similarly, language rights are aboutmore than using the home language in schools; they are also about the use and portrayalof languages in the media and their use for other public functions. However, lack ofaccess to mother tongue education is one of the primary causes of language death (insome situations), and is also a primary factor in the low educational success rates of indi-genous students. The section below briefly outlines education rights in general, beforemoving on to indigenous education rights.

II. The right to education and indigenous peoples

Since 1948, access to education has been recognised in international documents as a funda-mental human right. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states thateveryone has the right to education, that elementary education shall be free and compulsory,that education shall be directed to the ‘full development of the human personality and tostrengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’.

The emphasis on education is justified by the apparent correlation between educationand a host of other ideals for both individuals and social groupings, including democracy,empowerment, improved health and freedom. Accordingly, the efforts of governments,international bodies, and NGOs have been largely focused upon providing access to thisright. Since the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien Thailand in1990, and the World Education Forum meeting in Dakar, Senegal in 2000, the global initiat-ive to provide primary education for all of the world’s children has gained momentum. TheWorld Declaration on Education for All, produced at the Jomtien conference in 1990, has asa subtitle ‘Meeting Basic Learning Needs’, and Article I is focused on this goal: ‘Everyperson – child, youth and adult – shall be able to benefit from educational opportunitiesdesigned to meet their basic learning needs.’ The definition of these ‘learning needs’ isvery broad:24

These needs comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy,and problem solving) and the basic learning content (such as knowledge, skills, values, andattitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, tolive and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of theirlives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning. The scope of basic learningneeds and how they should be met varies with individual countries and cultures, and inevitably,changes with the passage of time.25

This very comprehensive definition leaves much room for interpretation and the devel-opment of appropriate local strategies, at least in theory. In practice, despite the lack of

132 J. Hays


specification as to educational form or methods, the ‘right to education’ is usually under-stood to mean the right to participation in existing state educational institutions. Effortsto increase access to this right – to move towards Education for All – are generallyaimed at overcoming what are seen as the primary obstacles to full participation informal education systems. These include primarily poverty, distance from school, lack ofparental support, and (in some cases) language issues.

Spring 26 reports that the ‘most daunting problem’ of the Jomtien conference was‘reconciling a universal declaration of the right to education with cultural differences,particularly those of indigenous peoples’. Indigenous peoples and their historical experi-ences with education provide a particular challenge to the fundamental assumptions under-lying the rights-based discourses of education. Before moving on to the ways that educationrights are addressed in documents outlining specific indigenous rights, in the section belowI will briefly highlight the common experiences reported by indigenous peoples in formaleducation systems, historically and today.

Indigenous peoples in formal education systems

Although indigenous peoples live in widely varied circumstances around the world, andare culturally very different from each other, they share an identifiable pattern when itcomes to their experiences in modern formal education systems. There exists an exten-sive body of literature pointing to a complex of challenges confronting indigenous min-orities in mainstream education systems, many having to do with linguistic and culturaldifferences between the schools.27 The disciplinary styles used at schools are often aliento indigenous students, and the standards by which students’ behaviour is judged inschools often directly contradict values and standards of the home community. Theskills that indigenous children bring to school with them are almost always devalued,or simply not recognised, in formal schools, which has the effect of undermining theconfidence of the students in their own competence from the very beginning. Poverty,social stigma, and social stress within indigenous communities exacerbate all of theseproblems.

These widespread and well-known issues have been the focus of the World IndigenousPeoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE), which has had eight tri-annual meetings since1987. WIPCE has outlined the fundamental issue in The Coolangatta Statement on Indigen-ous Peoples’ Rights in Education:

Historically, Indigenous peoples have insisted upon the right of access to education. Invariablythe nature, and consequently the outcome, of this education has been constructed through andmeasured by non-Indigenous standards, values and philosophies. Ultimately the purpose of thiseducation has been to assimilate Indigenous peoples into non-Indigenous cultures andsocieties. Volumes of studies, research and reports dealing with Indigenous peoples innon-Indigenous educational systems paint a familiar picture of failure and despair. Whenmeasured in non-Indigenous terms, the educational outcomes of Indigenous peoples are stillfar below that of non-Indigenous peoples. This fact exists not because Indigenous peoplesare less intelligent, but because educational theories and practices are developed and controlledby non-Indigenous peoples.28

Descriptions of the personal experiences of indigenous students from around the worldprovide compelling testimonies. Oscar Kawagley, for example, describes the ‘cultural bliz-zard’ of colonialism that overtook his people, the Yup’ik of Alaska, culminating in theimposition of the Western educational system:



When the educational system was put into place, all of our children received a 12-year sentenceto learn a foreign language and a foreign way of life. . .there were many things that becameobscured so that we could no longer see or fully understand ourselves or our world.29

In all parts of the world today indigenous peoples are still among the most economicallyand politically marginalised of all minorities. Access to education is frequently put forwardas the solution to these inequities, but in many places, this access is blocked by many bar-riers, and in some, indigenous peoples’ experiences with the formal education system havebeen devastating. At the same time, the indigenous activists, lawyers, teachers and otherswho have made it through the formal education system play a vital role in local communitydevelopment, the international indigenous movement, and other political, economic andsocial spheres. Clearly education is crucial – but what kind of education? Kawagley’sdescription of school as a ‘12-year sentence’ provides a good summary and reminder ofthe experience of many indigenous students in formal education systems as we continueto discuss the issue of indigenous educational rights.

Indigenous education rights

Indigenous rights in education and human rights documents

Several international declarations or conventions that address education also include therecognition of indigenous culture and knowledge. The Preamble to the World Declarationon Education for All includes the recognition that:

. . .traditional knowledge and indigenous cultural heritage have a value and validity in their ownright and a capacity to both define and promote development.

Article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that:

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous originexist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, incommunity with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to professand practice his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.

In 2009, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published General Comment No.11: Indigenous Children and their Rights under the Convention, providing their interpret-ation of human rights provisions on this particular topic. This comment describes severalreferences to ethnic, cultural and religious minorities, in particular indigenous children,in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as other international documents.Points 56–63 describe the sections of the Convention that deal with education, andinclude the following points:

59: States parties are encouraged to make secondary and vocational education available andaccessible to every child. However, in practice, indigenous children are less likely to beenrolled in school and continue to have higher drop out and illiteracy rates than non-indigenouschildren. Most indigenous children have reduced access to education due to a variety of factorsincluding insufficient educational facilities and teachers, direct or indirect costs for education aswell as a lack of culturally adjusted and bilingual curricula in accordance with article 30 [of theConvention on the Rights of the Child]. Furthermore, indigenous children are frequently con-fronted with discrimination and racism in the school setting.60:. . .governments should recognise the right of indigenous peoples to establish their own edu-cational institutions and facilities, provided that such institutions meet minimum standardsestablished by the competent authority in consultation with these peoples.

134 J. Hays


61: States parties should ensure that school facilities are easily accessible where indigenouschildren live. . .The school cycle should take into account and seek to adjust to cultural prac-tices as well as agricultural seasons and ceremonial periods.62: Bilingual and inter-cultural curricula are important criteria for the education of indigenouschildren. Teachers of indigenous children should to the extent possible be recruited from withinindigenous communities and given adequate support and training.

Education rights in indigenous rights documents

International declarations and conventions that deal specifically with the rights ofindigenous peoples all address education. The most prominent of these are the InternationalLabour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 (1989) and the United Nations Declaration onthe Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). The first is binding but not signed by eitherBotswana or Namibia at the time of writing; the second is signed by both, but is notbinding. The Coolangatta Statement (from the World Indigenous Peoples Conference onEducation 1999) is also a strong and important statement on indigenous education rights,but it is not signed by any government. All three of these specifically assert the right ofindigenous peoples to establish their own educational systems, as well as to access stateeducational institutions. The ILO Convention 169 includes the following articles oneducation:

Article 26: Measures shall be taken to ensure that members of the peoples concerned have theopportunity to acquire education at all levels on at least an equal footing with the rest of thenational community.Article 27:1. Education programmes and services for the peoples concerned shall be developed andimplemented in co-operation with them to address their special needs, and shall incorporatetheir histories, their knowledge and technologies, their value systems and their furthersocial, economic and cultural aspirations.2. The competent authority shall ensure the training of members of these peoples and theirinvolvement in the formulation and implementation of education programmes, with a viewto the progressive transfer of responsibility for the conduct of these programmes to thesepeoples as appropriate.3. In addition, governments shall recognise the right of these peoples to establish their own edu-cational institutions and facilities, provided that such institutions meet minimum standardsestablished by the competent authority in consultation with these peoples. Appropriateresources shall be provided for this purpose.Article 29: The imparting of general knowledge and skills that will help children belonging tothe peoples concerned to participate fully and on an equal footing in their own community andin the national community shall be an aim of education for these peoples.

The Coolangatta Statement (1999) insists upon the right of Indigenous peoples to SelfDetermination, which embodies the right, among other things,

to control/govern Indigenous education systems; to establish schools and other learning facili-ties that recognize, respect and promote Indigenous values, philosophies and ideologies; [and]to promote the use of Indigenous languages in education.30

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The emphasis on self-determination as it relates to education is strongest in the recent UNDeclaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which includes several refer-ences to education, or which have specific bearing on education. These address both theright to access mainstream educational institutions that respect and accommodate the



languages and cultures of indigenous children, and the right to ‘establish and control theirown educational systems’. I will quote several relevant articles from the UNDRIP; togetherthey provide a strong comprehensive statement of indigenous educational rights. ThePreamble recognises

. . .in particular the right of indigenous families and communities to retain shared responsibilityfor the upbringing, training, education and well-being of their children, consistent with therights of the child.

The most explicit reference to education is Article 14, all three parts of which are relevant;none of these are fully implemented in either Botswana or Namibia:

1: Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems andinstitutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to theircultural methods of teaching and learning.2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms ofeducation of the State without discrimination.3. States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order forindigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities,to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their ownlanguage.

The first item asserts the right for indigenous-controlled education; this is currently nothappening at any official level in Botswana or Namibia. Access to government education‘without discrimination’, the second point above, is in theory the primary emphasis ofboth Botswana and Namibia – but in practice there are numerous factors which result ineducational discrimination against the San. The third point highlights the responsibilityof the state to provide access to culturally-relevant education in the home language. Thegovernment of Namibia is taking steps in this direction, with the publication of learningmaterials in San languages, and with the village schools, noted earlier. In Botswana, theright of indigenous and other minorities to access education in their own language isneither recognised nor addressed.

Indigenous knowledge

The general validity and importance of indigenous knowledge is recognised in the preambleof the UNDRIP, which states that ‘respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures andtraditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and propermanagement of the environment’. Article 31 highlights the rights of indigenous commu-nities over their knowledge, culture and practices – which implicitly includes the rightto pass them to future generations (this article also refers to intellectual property rights,and locates responsibility for protecting indigenous knowledge with the state, incooperation with indigenous peoples):

Article 31:(1) Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their culturalheritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifes-tations of their sciences, technologies and cultures. . ..They also have the right to maintain,control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditionalknowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.(2) In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognizeand protect the exercise of these rights.

136 J. Hays


Self-determination

The most fundamental right outlined in the UNDRIP is the right to self-determination,which is defined in Article 3(1) as the right of indigenous peoples to ‘freely determinetheir political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’.A critical aspect of self-determination is described in Article 18(1):

Article 18 (1): Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matterswhich would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordancewith their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenousdecision-making institutions.

Participation in decision-making processes requires an understanding of the languages inwhich the processes are taking place – this means not only the dominant national and inter-national languages, but also the discourses surrounding legal processes, for example, orcorporate negotiations. The ability of indigenous groups to participate in such processesrequires community members who have achieved a necessary level of education to speakthese various ‘languages’, as well as those of their community. Education is thus crucialto the issue of self-determination – in its role as an ‘enabling right’ – likewise self-determination in education refers to the right of indigenous peoples to determine forthemselves the best way for them to access the skills that they decide they need.

All the documents that deal specifically with indigenous rights contain strong state-ments on the right of indigenous children to access the education provided by the state.However, there is a stronger emphasis on the right of indigenous people to both haveaccess to state-sponsored education that builds upon their language, values, skills andknowledge, and to have the possibility to develop and control their own educationalsystems. For most San communities in southern Africa no such options exist.

Compulsory education and indigenous rights

The right to education is often linked with compulsory education; for example, Article 26(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right toeducation, that elementary education shall be free and compulsory. Article 28 of theConvention on the Rights of the Child requires states to ensure that primary education isfree and compulsory. There are three basic parties that can be held responsible for thiscompulsory aspect of educational rights. The government is compelled to provide edu-cation; parents/guardians are compelled to send their children and children are compelledto attend. The emphasis of the compulsory aspect, and the extent to which it is enforced,varies widely. For most African countries, the emphasis of compulsory education is uponthe government’s responsibility to make quality education available to its citizens.Although African governments are generally seen as falling short of this goal, mostAfrican countries do have an age range between which education is described as compul-sory, usually for about 10 years. For both Botswana and Namibia, education is compulsorybetween the ages of six and 15. Although in practice this is not systematically enforced, it isthe ideal towards which these countries are striving and the models upon which educationsystems in Namibia and Botswana are based are those in which compulsory education ispracticed.

By definition, a ‘compulsory right’ is a right that holders are obliged to participate in.Examining the compulsory aspect of educational rights highlights how it differs from otherrights discussed in this volume, and brings to light some important considerations around



educational rights – particularly as they apply to indigenous peoples. There is no other indi-genous right for which it is suggested that anyone should be compelled to have this rightfulfilled. Imagine thinking of land rights – whether to inhabit traditional lands, or to liveelsewhere – as compulsory. The former calls forth the ghost of apartheid and the forcedresettlements that took place. Resettlements of indigenous peoples out of their traditionalterritories are often defended by the necessity to provide goods and services (includingschools) – however; we do not usually view such resettlements as fulfilling rights. Simi-larly with language rights; while they are increasingly insisted upon, especially in therealm of education, they are also not compulsory. The right to use, write in, and be educatedin one’s mother tongue are choices; likewise, the right to learn the dominant language, whileperhaps a dire necessity for indigenous communities, is not conceived of as somethingpeople can be legally forced to do.

Howard Klepper31 points out that ‘mandatoriness would appear to be inimical to theconcept of having a right’ and thus requires some consideration; he outlines two ways tointerpret the concept of compulsory education as a right. One common understanding ofmandatory rights is paternalistic – the rights holders do not actually know what is bestfor them and thus must be compelled to engage in an activity that they may not wish toat the time, but that will ultimately benefit them. This is often assumed to be the reasonfor compelling children to attend school; they are minors and not old enough to makecompetent decisions for themselves.

Klepper suggests that a more accurate understanding of mandatory rights is not thepaternalistic one often assumed, but rather that fulfilment of these rights is somethingthat is so critical to the interest of society in general that individuals cannot be allowedto forgo participation in that right. He argues that there are certain things that, whilepeople can be legally compelled to do them, are primarily considered ‘rights’ by virtueof individual participation in the broader society that will benefit from universal partici-pation in said activity – not because of the benefits to individuals. He uses voting as anexample. While voting is considered a human right at an individual level,32 in societieswhere voting in elections is compulsory, voting is a compulsory right because it isassumed that society as a whole will benefit from all individuals voting, and the individualwill in turn benefit as a member of that society. He suggests that for all cases in which a rightis mandatory, the ultimate beneficiary is the collective to which the individual belongs, asmuch as, or more than, the individual. Klepper argues that it is only according to this secondinterpretation that compulsory education can actually be conceived of as a ‘right’.

Both of these understandings are relevant to this discussion. San communities insouthern Africa are often infantilised, their actions and understandings interpreted aschild-like and naıve, and paternalistic treatment is so common as to be ‘common sense’in many places.33 San parents are frequently described as ‘not caring about’ or ‘not under-standing the value of’ education – this is often identified as one of the major challengesconfronting efforts to increase San children’s attendance in schools. Research among Sancommunities shows, however, that San parents and children understand very well thevalue of education as it relates to their circumstances; reasons for non-attendance are notdue to lack of understanding, but rather to a variety of economic, cultural, social and prac-tical barriers to school attendance – including the poor quality of schools in their areas.34

Indigenous land rights, language rights, rights to cultural heritage and other rights areunderstood primarily to benefit the specific rights holders, as individuals and communities;one would not argue that indigenous people should be compelled to have these rights ful-filled based upon their benefits to larger state society (though recognition of these rightsmay well ultimately result in healthier society for all members, not only for indigenous

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peoples themselves). The right to education, however, can be understood this way; in orderto have a functioning state, members of the society must be educated in a particular way inorder to ensure common identity and understanding. Although the right to education isportrayed primarily as a benefit to the rights-holder, refusal to participate in mainstreameducation is also perceived as a threat to social order.

The most important point about compulsory education is that unless that education is ofhigh quality, attentive to the needs of the child and respectful of his or her community,language, culture, and knowledge foundation (among other things), to call such education‘compulsory’ does an enormous disservice to indigenous children. Examples from thehistory of indigenous education in North America, Australia, and other parts of theworld provide evidence that forced, assimilative education does not produce goodeducational results for individuals or society. Ultimately such approaches lead to long-term social problems, and high costs to both the community and the government. Beingcompelled or forced to attend schools where one’s own language, culture, values andknowledge systems are discounted, and where one is mistreated by school authoritiesand peers, cannot be called a ‘right’ by any reasonable understanding of the term.

Given this, the emphasis for indigenous educational rights should be on improvingaccess to appropriate education, as described in Article 14 of the UNDRIP (above).While access to state-sponsored education is a right as defined by this article (14(2)) andin other documents, focus only on this aspect, and making it compulsory without attentionto its quality and cultural relevance, is in fact a violation of indigenous rights, to the extentthat it violates other articles of the UNDRIP including the following:

Article 7 (2):. . .Indigenous peoples. . .shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any otheract of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.Article 8 (1): Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forcedassimilation or destruction of their culture.Article 12 (1): ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop and teach theirspiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies. . .’Article 13 (1): Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit tofuture generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systemsand literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places andpersons (emphasis added).

In human rights instruments and other international statements specifically pertaining toindigenous peoples, the right to establish their own education systems, and to have access toeducation that respects, recognises and uses their own language and culture, is emphasised.This does not mean that access to mainstream education systems is not an important issue –this right is also very clearly articulated in these same documents. The emphasis is a reac-tion to the disproportionate emphasis placed on access to mainstream education in mostparts of the world, and a response to the serious problems indigenous communities havehad, and continue to have, with mainstream education. Questions remain, however, as towhat is the best way to fulfil both aspects of educational rights.

III. Capital, rights and capabilities – approaches to education and development

Katarina Tomasevski was the UN special rapporteur on the right to education (1998–2004),and also began the Right to Education Project35 in 2001 in an effort to promote awarenessand understandings of education as a human right. She identified two dominant discoursesin international educational development, ‘education-as-a-right’ and ‘education-as-a-traded-service’. The former describes the approach that all people have the right to



education, and that this education should be provided by governments; the latter view,associated with international corporations and financial institutions, holds that educationshould be traded like any other service.36 These two discourses, she argued, ‘do notoverlap’. She further argued that a rights-based approach to education was underminedby the latter, the economic approach taken by international financing institutions such asthe World Bank:

Although most governments are legally bound to protect and promote the right to education,the World Bank does not recognise that education is a human right. Because access to inter-national development finance, including debt relief, is guided by non-rights-based approachesand decided through extra-legal procedures, the right to education is harmed rather than helped,as is the rule of law on which human rights are based.37

These competing views of education in the international arena form the backdrop againstwhich discourses about indigenous education rights are set.

Drawing on the work of both Tomasevski and the economist Amartya Sen, IngridRobeyns38 describes three models of ways to approach educational inequity: a humancapital approach, a rights-based approach, and a capabilities approach. In her very thought-ful and useful analysis, Robeyns highlights the assumptions underlying each approach, anddiscusses their potential to improve access to appropriate education. Robeyns is not talkingspecifically about indigenous education, but her models are entirely relevant to indigenousconcerns and to the argument I am making here; I will briefly outline them and then discusstheir specific relevance to indigenous education in southern Africa.

The human capital approach recognises the income-generating potential of education atboth micro and macro levels. In this view, education is valuable because it creates skills andincreases productivity; the view of humans in this model is primarily as ‘economic pro-duction factors’, or workers. As Robeyns describes, a major problem with human capitaltheory is that the only benefits of education considered are increased productivity andhigher wages; the intrinsic importance of education is not recognised. Furthermore, it isentirely instrumental; the only value – to individual or social group – ascribed to educationis the potential contribution to economic proficiency. Education is seen as an investment byeconomic institutions. A corollary is that it is more worthwhile to invest in education inplaces, and with individuals, that will yield a return. This is the approach that Tomasevskistrongly criticizes, and her advocacy of a rights-based approach was a direct counter to thedominant economic/human capital approach. The rights-based framework by contrast,prioritises the intrinsic importance of education and is associated with the Education forAll movement – every human being is entitled to a decent education, even when onecannot be sure that this education will pay off in human capital terms.

Simplistic versions of both of these understandings ignore the value of knowledgerelated to subsistence economies that operate outside of the wage economy. This gap isnot filled by the recognition of the intrinsic value of education; both miss the economicaspects of skills and knowledge that are not directly quantifiable and linked to the casheconomy. To the extent that protection of these subsistence modes requires the specialapplication of human rights principles to the peoples who maintain economies basedupon them (to varying degrees), it also requires special consideration of how educationalrights should be applied in these circumstances. This approach is also not outside theframe of the ‘Education for All’ movement; recall the definition of learning needsquoted earlier, which are described as comprising: ‘both essential learning tools. . .andthe basic learning content. . .required by human beings to be able to survive, to developtheir full capacities, to live and work in dignity. . .’.39 These goals and others outlined in

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the statement will be facilitated by recognition of the cultural and economic context of indi-genous communities.

Robeyns identifies some other limitations and problems with a purely rights-baseddiscourse. One is that it is often perceived as – or is actually – largely rhetorical. Mostglobal declarations on education are formulated in terms of rights or overall outcometargets, without precisely specifying who has the responsibility for ensuring that variousaspects of these targets are met. Secondly, Robeyns points out there is a risk of reducingeducational rights to legal rights only, and ignoring the moral rights aspect which, as sheexplains, requires everyone – not only government – to share the responsibility. Thirdly,governments and policy makers can ‘hide behind’ a rights-based policy, being contentwhen: ‘they have strictly followed the rules that a limited interpretation of the rightsimposes on them, even when additional efforts are necessary to meet the goal that underliesthe rights’.40 This is an important limitation, and one which is relevant to the argument Ihave been making so far about indigenous education. A formally rights-based approachto indigenous education may not look closely at the various factors that constraineducational opportunities, or at what educational approach is best for the community inquestion – focusing instead on simple access to schools (regardless of their quality orappropriateness). This is an area where an indigenous rights perspective that emphasiseswhat applications are necessary to ensure that fundamental human rights are met, could,in fact, contribute to a more sophisticated application of educational rights in general –if strategically applied.

Finally, and linked with all of the above points, Robeyns points out that rights-basedarguments tend to be exclusively government focused, giving them full responsibility foreducational provision. Governments are viewed as ‘owing’ education to their citizens,and little attention is given to what individuals, families and communities also ‘owe’ totheir children. In reference to indigenous communities, we could also say that such argu-ments do not always address what communities are able to provide for their children, prior-itising instead access to languages, knowledge and skills associated with dominant culturesand mainstream employment. Recognition of the validity of indigenous knowledge andculture entails recognition of what parents and other community members do teach chil-dren, and what children already know. Education approaches that do not recognise thisare both less effective and play a role in undermining the transmission and reproductionof these knowledge and skill sets.

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas also questions the effectiveness of using a rights-basedapproach to address issues of language and education, asking, ‘Can a human rightsapproach to language planning and policy promote educational equity for diverse studentpopulations?’41 Skutnabb-Kangas identifies mother tongue education as a key componentof indigenous peoples’ demands ‘to have the collective right to exist and reproduce them-selves as a distinct collectivity respected and formally legalised’. She notes the legitimacyof the right, as well as the potential benefits for all humanity of recognising and maintaininglinguistic and cultural diversity. She concludes, however, that thus far a human rightsapproach has not been effective in promoting educational equity, especially for indigenousminorities who are currently the victims of ‘linguistic genocide’. One reason, she suggests,is that such rights fall under the category of collective rights, which states ‘seem to see asdangerous’.42 Like Robeyns, she argues that it is too easy for states to interpret educationand language rights arguments in a way that does not require them to provide mother tongueeducation for minority groups; she also argues that rights-based arguments too easilybecome ‘marvellous rhetoric’ while the reality remains ‘grim’; she is not optimistic thatrights-based arguments will produce change.



Robeyns proposes a third approach to education, the capability model, based on thecapability approach outlined by economist Amartya Sen43 and used in a wide range offields relating to development, economics, and philosophy to evaluate various aspects ofpeople’s well-being. In this view, capabilities are conceived as potential, or real opportu-nities based on social and economic circumstances, and are necessary for various function-ings. Sen defines the terms this way: ‘A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capabilityis the ability to achieve.’44 Although the two are intimately linked, capabilities are thecentral unit of analysis. It is the ability to achieve that is important, as well as thefreedom to choose how to direct one’s capabilities. Dreze and Sen45 argue, from thisperspective, that education is a critical component, and should be directed towards theenhancement of capabilities.

Robeyns argues that the value of this approach to education is that it acknowledges bothof the above approaches: education as a human right, and as a means towards materialimprovement; she concludes that the appropriate approach will depend on the context.While the rights-based model is more clearly articulated than the capability model, andin many countries better understood, those working on behalf of improving educationshould be strategic in their approach. She says,

. . .the intrinsic aim is to expand people’s capabilities. . ..Rights are only one possible instrumentfor reaching that goal, which may be effective in some cases and some contexts, but may not bethe most effective instrument in other cases. . ..We should deal with rights discourses strategi-cally, using them where they are likely to contribute by expanding people’s educational capa-bilities, and supplementing them with other instruments if needed.46

This is a key point. In some situations, a rights-based approach may be the most effectiveway to pressure governments, donors, or other relevant parties to act according to theresponsibilities that they do have. Sometimes, in fact it is the rhetorical aspect of rightsthat may in fact be the most useful – if a rights-based argument proves to be the mostconvincing one for those in positions to make policy changes, provide funds, or otherwisecontribute to educational improvement (I will return to this below). However, whatRobeyns so clearly articulates is that it is important neither to rest in the rhetoric nor tofocus on mere access at the expense of educational quality:

. . .What ultimately matters is not just the proclamation that we all have a right to education, orthe effective protection of that right, but whatever it takes policy makers, and others who are ina position to contribute, to work towards a high-quality education for all, as part of a morecomprehensive view on what we owe to each other, and especially to children, in a justsociety and a just world.47

What does this mean for indigenous people and children? What is meant by ‘high-quality’ education? If we refer back to the documents outlining indigenous rights, describedabove, it is clear that many indigenous communities feel strongly that the kind of educationthey want is one which at least recognises and respects their languages, cultures, and his-tories and in which their children are well-treated; most would also like a greater degree ofinvolvement in their children’s education. Since this type of education is not available tovery many indigenous communities, a rights-based approach focusing primarily onaccess to mainstream education, without addressing quality and appropriateness will fallfar short of the spirit of the educational rights movement. The capability model providesthe basis for both government and non-governmental work with and by indigenouspeoples to build educational approaches that address their needs, cultures, languages, and

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aspirations. A rights-based approach that starts with indigenous education statements anddeclarations provides clear support for this goal.

What approach to education will work in southern Africa?

We can argue for culturally appropriate education for San communities from all three of theperspectives described by Robeyns; all three models also provide potential strategies foraddressing the situation. I would like to suggest that an indigenous rights approach infact both draws upon and links all three of these, and that all three components are integralto a successful application of indigenous rights – in particular in the area of education. Thissection will examine all three, and link them to indigenous education rights.

The human capital approach

In southern Africa in general, the predominant approach to education is the human capitalapproach. San individuals and communities, development workers and government offi-cials all emphasise the increased access to employment and earning potential associatedwith education, as well as the need for more educated San individuals to be able to fillkey positions in government and in local and national organisations. Realistically, forSan individuals and communities struggling to survive with less than adequate resources,as well as for the governments who are weighing the costs and benefits of education, theeconomic aspects of education will inevitably play a major role in educational choices –for individuals, and for the governments in terms of policy and spending.

The few San individuals with high levels of education are currently in demand and dooften have access to greater economic opportunities. However, it is not necessarily the casethat either: (a) there would be jobs for everyone if all San children accessed high levels ofeducation (unemployment rates are high in both Namibia and Botswana); nor (b) that theonly economic opportunities available to them are through formal education, or throughthe formal economy. Furthermore, formal education opportunities, as well as most of thejobs that they allow people to access, are often located far from indigenous communities.Following this route usually entails a separation from the community, and many (bothchildren and adults) choose not to do this. Thus while the human capital/economicmodel of education responds to an important need within San communities – to accessmore resources – a pure human capital approach does not take into considerationnon-capital economic income, or the value of community relations to individuals.

There are a couple of ways to productively approach the situation from a human capitalperspective, however. According to Heugh,48 mother tongue and culturally appropriateeducation will be a smart investment by southern African countries. She calculates thatthe economic investment in mother tongue education will be more than offset by thegreater number of students who will graduate – as opposed to dropping out early andthus ‘wasting’ initial investment. Specific economic analysis along these lines in Botswana,for example, would be very useful. Another reality is that, for San communities (as well asfor other rural minorities), many locally available economic opportunities rely on traditionalskills that are either ignored or devalued in formal education systems. As emphasisedabove, many of these are informal, including work with tourists, craft production, orgathering food sources from the surrounding environment.

Opportunities to use traditional skills in formal employment seem to be increasing in allof these fields. In Namibia, for example, efforts to develop formal qualifications standardsfor tracking skills are currently in process, and estimations are that up to 300 jobs may beavailable for qualified trackers, in various industries including tourism, wildlife



management, and police work.49 Tracking is not a skill learned at school, but in the bush.Well-managed pilot projects that provide clear examples of the economic benefits ofeducation built upon traditional skills, could provide strong backing for these arguments.These also require financial support; who provides this support will determine in largepart the possibilities. Currently, the formal recognition of traditional skills is largelysymbolic; it remains to be seen what economic benefits will follow.

A rights-based approach

Meanwhile the non-quantifiable subsistence value of such skills should not be ignored.Despite the potential economic benefits described above, the human capital model hasclear limitations. The value of indigenous languages and skills is not only economic;furthermore in some cases improving indigenous education may not be strictly efficienteconomically. Although improved economic opportunity is usually identified as the mainbenefit of education, in southern Africa, the rights-based discourse is equally salient.However, educational rights arguments are also problematic in southern Africa for thereasons Robeyns describes – they are largely rhetorical, emphasise access to educationrather than the quality of that education, and are primarily government focused.

Indigenous rights documents have clearly outlined the right of indigenous communitiesto determine their own educational options. San individuals and communities frequentlyand clearly state what kind of education they want. They would like: access to formaleducation that respects their culture; mother tongue education (at least in the early years,if not longer); extended access to education opportunities within their own communitiesand greater opportunity to access skills through non-formal education. Although thesedesires are pedagogically sound, they are frequently dismissed because they are interpretedas separatist or isolationist and associated with the region’s apartheid past, or are simply notareas where funding and other resources are directed.

According to the UNDRIP, San communities have the right to ‘establish and controltheir educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, ina manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning’.50 Under what con-ditions could such an argument be used as a legal instrument? In southern Africa, one mustbe mindful of how such an argument can be misinterpreted. As Saugestad51 points out, acourt case can be won or lost, but especially for indigenous peoples, it is also a questionof winning or losing public opinion. Land claims – even where they are successful –can create a public opinion problem. In the case of education, if people (including Santhemselves) perceive San communities as getting either special treatment or inferior edu-cation, public opinion could undermine any possible gains of such efforts. A legalrights-based approach can potentially solve one problem only to create new ones.

This does not mean that a human rights or indigenous rights approach would not work,or that a legal case could not be successful. It does mean that there are many issues at stakeand comprehensive understanding of the situation is critical before launching high profilecases. For education as with other rights in southern Africa, what will help is to findways to emphasise or demonstrate that it is not special rights that are being demanded.52

Rather, what San communities have a right to is a pedagogically sound and economicallybeneficial solutions to the current failure rates in formal education systems. One way thiscan be done is through focusing on more accepted rights (such as the rights of the child)and demonstrating specifically how special applications are necessary for them to berealised – I return to this below. First the section below briefly elaborates the capabilitiesapproach, and what it has to offer arguments for educational rights.

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The capabilities approach

Joel Spring makes an important point in reference to education rights and indigenouspeoples, that a ‘universal justification of the right to education must be acceptable to allcultures’.53 He suggests the right to education for all people as the right to:

an education that provides them with the ability and understanding to determine the advantagesand disadvantages of the global economy and culture. In other words, all people should havethe power to mediate the relation between their own cultures and the current world system.54

This is in line with the capabilities approach that Robeyns outlines in relation to education,described above. A key advantage of this approach is that it emphasises not absoluteoutcomes (in terms of capital gains, or numbers of children in school, for example), butthe process of increasing the options available to people – and then enabling them tomake the choice they feel best for themselves, their community, or their children.

Although they do not use the language, the ‘capabilities’ approach is the one that manysouthern African NGOs, university bodies, and others who work with the San in Botswanaand Namibia are quietly using. Several complementary projects focus upon enhancingpeoples’ capability to participate in a broader range of economic opportunities, bothtraditional and modern, and increasing awareness of their options and abilities to make acritical choice about the course that they choose to follow. These approaches include thedevelopment of mother tongue (and especially community-generated) educationalmaterials; the development of locally-based early childhood and basic education for Sanchildren (mostly aimed at facilitating transition to mainstream schools); the developmentof income-generating projects that build on traditional skills, and improving access tohigher education and training programmes.

IV. Current efforts to improve indigenous educational options in Botswana andNamibia

The most well-known San language education effort is the Nyae Nyae Village Schools,noted above, which provide mother tongue education in Ju|’hoansi language to childrenin several villages in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, in Namibia. Although transition tothe mainstream government schools (where English is the language of instruction) hasbeen problematic, the village schools have prompted the creation of mother tongueeducation materials in Ju|’hoansi, as well as the training of teachers from the community– all of which contribute to the expansion of educational options for San communities.Building upon this start, the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa(WIMSA) has worked with the National Institute for Educational Development inNamibia (NIED) and a number of international donors55 to develop mother tongue edu-cation materials in two more San languages, Khwedam and !Kung.56 The KalahariPeoples Fund, in collaboration with WIMSA, is also supporting teacher training for poten-tial San teachers and materials development.57 In Namibia, the effort to recognise andformalise tracking knowledge (noted above), is complemented by plans to organise‘tracker schools’ that will build upon indigenous tracking skills and will provide individualswith certificates that will increase their employment potential. These efforts are being spear-headed by the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), KalahariPeoples Fund, Cybertracker, and local businesses (in particular tourist lodges).58

Managed effectively, this could provide a point of departure for alternative educationapproaches for San communities.



Also in Namibia, the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), acting jointly with WIMSA, hasappointed an indigenous rights specialist to determine the most appropriate ways toimprove the recognition of the rights of indigenous communities in southern Africa. Themulti-pronged approach of the LAC includes encouraging the government of Namibia tostrengthen its approach to indigenous rights; training of government officials on indigenousrights (in particular, the UNDRIP and ILO 169); training communities about their rights;and preparing evidence for court cases (most of which involve land rights). A foundationof their approach to indigenous rights is the emphasis on them as a special application ofgeneral human rights, which Namibia is committed to upholding.59

In Botswana, the Kuru Family of Organisations (KFO) has as its vision that: ‘The Sanpeoples of Southern Africa will achieve permanent control over their lives, resources anddestiny’;60 this could also be a succinct summary of the vision of the UNDRIP. Themission statement is to cultivate the leadership necessary to facilitate a developmentprocess in which marginalised communities have the ability to ‘independently makeinformed decisions and to implement their own viable response to their situation’.61

Although the terms ‘rights’ and ‘capabilities’ are not used in their discourse, the organis-ations that make up KFO are working from a variety of angles to achieve the same goalsas the rights documents described above, and the authors working on these issues, arealso advocating.

Some of the approaches of the various KFO organisations and affiliated programmeshave direct relevance to education, including the Naro Language Project, which focuseson describing and teaching literacy skills in a local San language, Naro, and creatingmaterials in the language. Bokamoso is a well known accredited pre-school teacher trainingprogramme working in remote, predominantly San communities, and focuses on earlychildhood development (ECD) as a ‘foundation for school readiness and other transitions’– thus it is geared towards increasing participation in the government schools. It aims to dothis by ‘fostering a familiar linguistic and cultural environment in preschools, and involvingparents and traditional educators in the curriculum’.62 There are also several incomegeneration projects (including an art project, a tourism venture, and craft production) thatfacilitate greater participation in the local and national cash economy, a health project,and others.63 Thuto Isago Trust, in Ghanzi, helps facilitate the transition between homeand school for San children from surrounding farms and settlements.

For 15 years, the University of Botswana – University of Tromsø CollaborativeProgramme for San/Basarwa Research and Capacity Building (colloquially known asUBTromso; in April 2010 the programme transitioned into a Centre of Study at the Univer-sity of Botswana focusing on San and other marginalised minorities) has facilitated Sanstudents’ access to tertiary education, assisting with application procedures and providingsupport throughout the process. The newly-established Management and LeadershipDevelopment Programme of Letloa Trust (a support organisation for KFO) works tobuild the capacity of San youth to take on senior management positions within theirlocal organisations.64 These two programmes are now partnering in an effort to help Sanyouth balance the achievement of formal qualifications with rootedness in their owncommunities and cultures – in order to obtain the respect of both their communities andthe other development actors with whom they must be able to negotiate.

The role of government

As Robeyns points out, a rights model places the obligation to act almost entirely upon thegovernment.65 In countries like Botswana and Namibia, this perception can limit

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educational options for San communities in several ways. For one, the type of education thegovernment is currently able to provide (in terms of finances and capacity, or according totheir language and education policy) does not meet the needs of the community. Within theexisting educational options, the likelihood of improvement in the overall circumstances ofSan children and communities is very slim. San children and communities will most likelycontinue to exercise in large numbers their ‘right to refuse’ to participate in a system inwhich their culture, language, knowledge, and skills are denigrated and the benefits ofwhich are not entirely clear. At the same time, San communities will also probably continueto practice their own systems of knowledge reproduction, to varying degrees of success,depending upon circumstances and economic opportunity.

Development programmes such as those described above can potentially go a long waytowards laying the groundwork for fulfilling the educational and other rights of indigenouspeoples by providing alternatives to government education, and economic alternatives forthose who have not been formally educated, and by working to improve the relevance andfriendliness of government schools for indigenous children and communities. In general,most of these efforts have been undertaken by non-government organisations, universitybodies and individual academics (including linguists, anthropologists, historians,educationalists and others), missionaries and churches. However, government also has animportant role to play. The Namibian government’s commitment to the development ofeducational materials in minority languages, and to the spirit of recognition of culturaland linguistic diversity and educational and language diversity is a key aspect of theprogress that has been made in that country. However, this progress has important limit-ations, as Hopson, describes in this volume.66 The fact that these efforts are happeningalmost entirely within the formal education system, and that other necessary adjustmentsare not happening, limits the effectiveness of this approach.

Similar efforts in Botswana have been severely hampered by the language policy whichexplicitly prohibits government-sponsored education in languages other than English andSetswana. Alternatives must thus be financed by non-government sources. Donors,however, are reluctant to commit to the financing of mother tongue education initiativesin the country either because they do not want to be seen to go against governmentpolicy, and are unwilling to commit indefinitely to a project that government seems unlikelyto take over in a designated number of years. In Botswana a potential drawback of a rightsapproach described by Robeyns are illustrated; the government can be seen as ‘hidingbehind’ a rights-based, ‘education for all’ discourse and can even claim to have one ofthe best educational outputs in all of Africa. Since the responsibility for education islocated primarily with the government, other parties are not able or willing to supportthe development of more appropriate education.

Child labour and the right to education

Interestingly, in Botswana, the issue of educational rights may have the potential of beingaddressed most effectively not through the UNDRIP, nor even under educational rights butunder the issue of child labour – which is also addressed in the UNDRIP and linked toeducation:

Article 17 (2): States shall in consultation and cooperation with indigenous peoples takespecific measures to protect indigenous children from economic exploitation and from per-forming any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, orto be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. . .



Led by the Department of Labour and Social Security under the Ministry of Labour andHome Affairs in Botswana, the Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labouris a cooperative effort that involves most of Botswana’s ministries, each of which isresponsible for developing their own plan of action to contribute to the elimination ofchild labour. Farm labour accounts for over half of child labour in Botswana; it is alsogeneral knowledge that (in some districts) most of the children working on farms are San,or other non-Setswana speaking groups. The problem of child labour would largely besolved if the children were in school; thus the Ministry of Education should concentrate itsefforts to eliminate child labour on increasing the participation of these minorities in school.The rights of the child (especially educational rights) are also invoked in this discussion.

Efforts over the past decades to increase the numbers of San students – especially thoseliving on farms – in Botswana’s schools have had limited success. It is believed by manywithin the Ministry of Education that mother-tongue and multi-grade classrooms wouldhelp, but these have not been implemented – largely because of national languagepolicy. There is currently a push for change in policy and for more appropriate education,in the name of combating the problem of child labour.

There is thus an implicit recognition that the process of acculturation of remoteminorities has been unsuccessful, which appears in the context of trying to solve theproblem of child labour. This is both an illustration of how different rights are intimatelylinked, and the ways that rights arguments can work indirectly. It is also a confirmationof what many San communities and those who work with them have been arguing for solong – that access to education in their own language and that respects and builds upontheir culture and indigenous knowledge will be a more effective approach.

Conclusion

The adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was an importantstep in the long road towards increasing indigenous self-determination. The UNDRIPclearly outlines the right of indigenous peoples to establish their own education systems,as well as to access mainstream systems on a more level playing field. In practice, thereare still numerous barriers to the actual implementation of either aspect of indigenouseducational rights. In southern Africa, as in most parts of the world, educational rightsefforts have given far greater priority to increasing the numbers of indigenous childrenattending formal educational systems than to creating alternative approaches – despitethe fact that existing mainstream institutions are often unfriendly, unhealthy, and unsafeplaces for indigenous children to be, that the benefits of attaining formal education arefar from guaranteed, and that formal education often plays a central role in underminingthe social structures and knowledge transmission of indigenous communities, and thatthe success rate of San students is dismal. This should not be understood to mean thatSan children and communities do not want access to government schools – they do. Butgenerally not as they currently exist, and not as an only option.

Can rights arguments be used to improve the situation? Robeyns points out that we mustbe strategic in how we use rights arguments. In Botswana, educational rights advocacy couldperhaps push to improve the quality of educational facilities and staffing at schools in remoteareas, where most San children live. In particular, the hostel situation is in desperate need ofattention; by any standard the physical and social environment of the hostels is unacceptableand a violation of the rights of the child. In Namibia, language and education rightsapproaches are already the basis for mother tongue education efforts, although as notedabove, and by Hopson,67 the interpretation of these is very narrow.68

148 J. Hays


The ‘capacities’ model, as Robeyns describes it provides a strategic complement torights-based approaches.69 Although they do not use this particular term, I suggest thatthis is the approach currently followed by the various organisations described above. Thefocus is on increasing the options available to indigenous communities – as well as theirability to negotiate on their own behalf and thus to decide for themselves what is the bestapproach to take – through a variety of complementary approaches. Such approaches endea-vour to be ‘bottom-up’, starting with indigenous communities and their needs rather thanwith blanket solutions at a national or regional level. There are major gaps, and enormousblocks to the full realisation of indigenous education rights. However, ‘indigenous rights’argument provides a strong theoretical and moral backing for efforts in this direction.

Is an indigenous rights argument mainly rhetorical? The UNDRIP may be, at this pointin southern Africa, primarily an argument. For a small group to claim special educationalrights under the declaration may not currently be a realistic possibility. As an argument,however, it is very useful. The UNDRIP is a carefully crafted document, over 25 yearsin the making and (as often noted) the only human rights document drafted with theinput of the rights-holders themselves – it has powerful moral legitimacy and a wellthought through architecture. It provides both explicit standards, and a guideline on howto achieve those standards. It also interfaces with the African Charter on Human andPeoples Rights and the African Commission,70 as well as other UN Instruments, including,for example, the Rights of the Child, of which Namibia and Botswana are both signatories.These links, together with the strong emphasis on educational self-determination and onculturally appropriate education makes it clear that simply providing access, and aimingfor straightforward ‘equity’ is not enough.

Efforts on the part of governments to make schools more friendly for San children andtheir families may improve the current situation. In the case of Botswana, this may bemotivated by the desire to reduce child labour; in Namibia, in the name of the right tomother tongue education. These are positive and necessary developments, and willbenefit San communities. Given the nature of the current understanding of indigenousrights in southern Africa, it is not realistic to expect the government to take on full respon-sibility for meeting indigenous education demands. But government policy and publicopinion can and do change (gradually or sometimes quite suddenly), and current effortsin the direction of greater educational diversity and general recognition of the legitimacyof indigenous rights will hopefully contribute to such a shift. An indigenous rights approachin the area of education, as in all areas, will be most effective when recognised as an avenuetowards the achievement of basic human rights – and not something outside of that. Untilthis is clear, there will be resistance to them on the part of southern African governments,and the public.

In general, achieving fulfilment of the rights of San communities in Botswana andNamibia to educational self-determination should be seen as a process, and one to beapproached from many angles – there is no one effort that will solve the problem. Involvedoutsiders, including academics, NGO workers, government officials, and others can help byworking to improve the options available to San communities, but ultimately, it is indigen-ous communities and individuals who will determine the most appropriate educationalavenue for themselves.

AcknowledgementsThis article is informed by long-term research in southern Africa on educational issues. It was writtenduring a research fellowship in comparative indigenous studies at the University of Tromsø, which



allowed me to make several trips back to southern Africa over the course of the past three years togather updated material, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. Special thanks to Sidsel Saugestadand Nigel Crawhall for their careful reading of this paper and their informed suggestions. Thanks alsoto an anonymous reviewer for very constructive comments. Lesle Jansen at the Legal AssistanceCentre, and Ben-Begbie Clench at the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities, both provided impor-tant insight into the potential for indigenous rights instruments and arguments to be used strategicallyin southern Africa. And I acknowledge the San communities and individuals who have shared with metheir perspectives over the years. All of these noted have shaped my own understandings of the issues;the arguments as they are presented here are, of course, my own.

Notes1. Other terms used are Bushmen, or (in Botswana) Basarwa. None of these terms are the peoples’

own names for themselves, however, and generally they prefer to use their own terms such asJu|’hoansi, Khwe, Naro, or !Xun. In this article the term San is used when referring to the largergrouping, as is the standard practice of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities of SouthernAfrica (WIMSA). See also J. Hays and M. Biesele, ‘Indigenous Rights in Southern Africa:International Mechanisms and Local Contexts’, The International Journal of Human Rights,15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

2. Botswana has about 46,000 San, and Namibia 38,000, according to the Working Group ofIndigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, http://www.wimsanet.org (accessed 22 Novermber2010). According to WIMSA there are also 7000 in Angola and 6000 in South Africa, withsmall communities of a few hundred in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

3. Willemien le Roux, Torn Apart: San Children as Change Agents in a Process of Assimilation(Windhoek: WIMSA, 1999); James Suzman, Regional Assessment of the Status of the San inSouthern Africa: An Introduction (Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre, 2001); Jennifer Hays,‘Education, Rights and Survival for the Nyae Nyae Ju|’hoansi: Illuminating Global andLocal Discourses’ (PhD dissertation, State University of New York, University at Albany,2007).

4. These have been well-documented; see for example Ulla Kann, Robert Hitchcock and NomtuseMbere, Let them Talk: A Review of the Accelerated Remote Area Development Program(Gaborone: Ministry of Local Government and Lands and Oslo: Norwegian Agency for Devel-opment and Cooperation, 1990); Ulla Kann, Where the Sand is the Book: Education for Every-one in the Nyae Nyae Area (Consultancy Report for the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation inNamibia and the Swedish International Development Agency, 1991); Patti Swarts and RogerAvenstrup, Report on Preliminary Survey of Education for Bushman-Speaking Learners(Windhoek: Namibian Institute for Educational Development, 1995); Lucky Tshireletso,‘“They Are the Government’s Children”: School and Community Relations in a RemoteArea Dweller (Basarwa) Settlement in Kweneng District, Botswana’, International Journalof Educational Development 17, no. 2 (1997), 173–88. le Roux, Torn Apart; Willemien leRoux The Challenges of Change: A Tracer Study of San Preschool Children in Botswana(The Hague: Bernard Van Leer Foundation, 2002); Hays, Education, Rights and Survival forthe Nyae Nyae Ju|’hoansi; Velina Ninkova, ‘Challenges and Accomplishments of Gqaina, APrimary School for Ju|’hoan Children in Omaheke, Namibia’ (Masters Thesis, University ofTromsø, Norway, 2009).

5. Rodney Hopson, ‘Language Rights and the San in Namibia: A Fragile and Ambiguous butNecessary Proposition’, The International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 15 no. 1 (2011),this issue.

6. As of 2010, no former village school student had gone beyond grade 7; the majority drop out ingrade 4 or 5. From personal fieldnotes, July 2010.

7. See also S. Saugestad, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms of Indigenous Rights in Botswana’,The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue; and R. Hitchcock,M. Sapignoli and W. Babchuk, ‘What about our Rights? Settlements, Subsistence and Liveli-hood Security among Central Kalahan San and Bakgalagadi’, The International Journal ofHuman Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

8. The Remote Area Development Programme is under the Ministry of Local Government, whothus has responsibility for hostel construction, stocking, staffing, and so on, as well as otheraspects of education for those classified as Remote Area Dwellers. The schools, however, areunder the Ministry of Education. This division of responsibility can make it difficult to

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develop a cohesive approach to the linked problems at school and hostels, for San children withRADP support.

9. Le Roux, Torn Apart; Le Roux, Challenges of Change; Thuto Isago, ‘Trust’. Report on Survey ofChildren Aged between 5 and 16 Not in School, November 2009, Gantsi District, unpublishedsurvey, 2010.

10. Government of Botswana, National Census, 2001 (Gaborone: Government Printer, 2003).11. Setswana is a Bantu language. Minority languages in Botswana include other Bantu languages,

such as Kalanga (the largest minority language group in Botswana), Seyei, Sekgalagadi andOtjiherero, and San languages, including Ju|’hoansi, Naro, and Khwedam. Overall, Bantu-speaking minorities have fewer problems with education in general and the transition toSetswana, though there are variations within each group.

12. Recent government figures for Namibia show, for example, that out of the total enrollment ofSan learners in Namibia’s schools (6942), 67 per cent are in lower primary (grades 1–3),and 21.6 per cent in upper primary (4–6); only seven per cent of all San students in schoolare in secondary school; of these less than one per cent are in senior secondary. EducationManagement Information Systems, Education Statistics 2008 (Windhoek: Ministry ofEducation and Culture, 2009), 40. In Botswana, a recent (2009) survey by Thuto Isago, citedabove, found that, for example, in the freehold farms of Gantsi Farm Block – where most ofthe farm workers are San – 60 per cent of children aged 6–10 and 55 per cent of childrenaged 11–15 were not in school.

13. See Hitchcock, et al., ‘What about Our Rights?’; and Saugestad, ‘Impact of InternationalMechanisms’.

14. Bihela Sekere, ‘Minority Education in Botswana: Identity and Challenges’, Diaspora,Indigenous and Minority Education (forthcoming).

15. Splash Moronga, ‘The Death of Kelapile Kayawe of Tobere Village in the North East of theOkavango District’, unpublished report, 2009. This was not the first such occurrence, in1999 a child ran away from a hostel and was killed by a lion while trying to return to hervillage. The children are not naive; they know the dangers and choose to face them ratherthan stay at the hostels.

16. A new primary school, financed by the Chinese government, was just opened in January 2010; anew hostel for primary learners is under construction.

17. Eureka Mokibelo, Motshegaletau Workshop Report, submitted to UBTromsø, 25 February2008.

18. Saugested, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms’.19. http://www.right-to-education.org/node/233 (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).20. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No.11: Indigenous Children and

their Rights under the Convention (Geneva: UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009).21. Richard Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1979); Margarie Shostack, !Nisa, Story of a !Kung Woman(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Renee Sylvain, ‘“We Work to Have Life”:Ju|’hoan Women, Work and Survival in the Omaheke Region, Namibia’ (PhD thesis,Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 1999); Willemien le Roux and AlisonWhite, eds, Voices of the San (Cape Town: Kuela Publishers, 2005).

22. R. Sylvain, ‘At the Intersections: San Women and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa’,The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

23. Le Roux, Torn Apart; Kathleen Heugh, ‘Theory and Practice: Language Education Models inAfrica’, in Optimizing Learning and Education in Africa: The Language Factor. A Stock-takingResearch on Mother Tongue and Bilingual Education in Sub Saharan Africa (Windhoek:Association for the Development of Education in Africa, 2006), 56–84; Jennifer Hays, Forthe Benefit of All: Mother Tongue Education for Southern African Minorities (A ComprehensiveSummary Report from a Regional Conference on Multilingualism in Southern AfricanEducation. Gaborone Botswana, 1–2 June 2005. Windhoek: WIMSA); Gregory Kamwendo,Dudu Jankie and Andy Chebanne, eds, Multilingualism in Education and Communities inSouthern Africa (Gaborone: UBTromso, 2009).

24. See also Joel Spring, The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition, andGuidelines (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000).

25. World Declaration on Education for All: Article I – Meeting Basic Learning Needs (Jomtien,Thailand, 1990).



http://www.right-to-education.org/node/233

26. Spring, The Universal Right to Education, 4.27. For example: Murray Wax, Rosalie Wax and Robert Dumont, Formal Education in an

American Indian Community: Peer Society and the Failure of Minority Education (ProspectHeights: Waveland Press, 1964); Henry Trueba, Grace Pung Guthrie and Kathryn Hu-PeiAu, eds, Culture and the Bilingual Classroom: Studies in Classroom Ethnography (Rowley:Newbury House Publishers, 1981); Susan Phillips, The Invisible Culture: Communication inClassroom and Community on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (New York: Longman,1983); Sheila Aikman, ‘Territory, Indigenous Education and Cultural Maintenance: The Caseof the Arakmbut of South-Eastern Peru’, Prospects 25, no. 4 (1995): 593–608; Jerry Lipka,Gerald V. Hohatt and the Cuulistet Group, Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yup’ikEskimo Examples (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998); Teresa McCarty, A Placeto Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling(Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002).

28. Coolongotta Statement on Indigenous Rights in Education, World Indigenous PeoplesConference on Education, Hilo, Hawai‘i, 6 August 1999 (section 1.3.1).

29. Oscar Kawagley, ‘Tradition and Education: The World Made Seamless Again’, in Science andNative American Communities, ed. Keith James (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001),51–6.

30. Coolongotta Statement, section 2.2.4.31. Howard Klepper, ‘Mandatory Rights and Compulsory Education’, Law and Philosophy 15

(1996): 149–58.32. See the UN Declaration on Human Rights, Article 21.33. See Sylvain ‘We Work to Have Life’; Suzman Things from the Bush: A Contemporary History

of the Omaheke Bushmen (Switzerland: P. Schlettwein Publishing, 2001).34. Le Roux, Torn Apart; Hays, Education, Rights and Survival; Ninkova, Challenges and

Accomplishments.35. http://www.right-to-education.org (accessed 22 November 2010).36. Katarina Tomasevski, ‘Has the Right to Education a Future Within the United Nations? A

Behind-the-Scenes Account by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education 1998–2004’, Human Rights Law Review 5, no. 2 (2005): 208.

37. Katarina Tomasevski, ‘Not Education for All, Only for Those Who Can Pay: The World Bank’sModel for Financing Primary Education’, Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal(2005), http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2005_1/Tomasevski (accessed 22 Novermber2010).

38. Ingrid Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education: Rights, Capabilities and Human Capital’,Theory and Research in Education 4, no. 1 (2006): 69–84.

39. World Declaration on Education for All: Article I – Meeting Basic Learning Needs.40. Ibid., 70.41. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, ‘Marvellous Human Rights Rhetoric and Grim Realities: Language

Rights in Education’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 1, no. 3 (2002): 180.42. Ibid., 196.43. Amartya Sen, Inequality Re-examined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Amartya Sen,

Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999).44. Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987).45. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, India, Economic Development and Social Opportunity (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1995).46. Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’, 80 (emphasis added).47. Ibid., 83.48. Heugh, ‘Theory and Practice: Language Education Models in Africa’, 56–84.49. Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), Workshop Report on the

Formalization of Traditional Knowledge of Tracking in Namibia (Cape Town: IPACC, 2009).50. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 14:1.51. Saugestad, ‘Impact of International Mechanisms’.52. Lesle Janson at the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) in Windhoek emphasised this point in

personal communication (28 April 2010); this conversation with her triggered a shift inemphasis in my own perspective and argument.

53. Spring, The Universal Right to Education, 17.54. Ibid.

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http://www.go.warwick.ac.uk/elj/lgd/2005_1/Toma&scaron;evski

55. These include the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvL), the Icelandic Development Agency(ICEIDA), Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), The NamibianAssociation of Norway (NAMAS), and Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED).

56. !Kung speakers live primarily in Western Tsumkwe, Namibia. This language is sometimesconfused with !Xun, speakers of a related, but different language, originally from Angola.

57. For more information, visit http://www.wimsanet.org/; and http://www.kalaharipeoples.org/projects.html (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

58. IPACC, Workshop Report on the Formalization of Traditional Knowledge of Tracking inNamibia; Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), ‘Southern AfricaRegional Workshop on the Formalization of the Traditional Knowledge of Tracking’ (CapeTown: IPACC, 2007); Megan Biesele, personal communication; Stacey Main, personalcommunication. See also http://www.cybertracker.org/ (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).

59. Lesle Jansen, personal communication, 28 April 2010.60. For more information see http://www.kuru.co.bw/ (accessed 22 November 2010).61. Ibid.62. http://www.kuru.co.bw/bokamosoorg.html (accessed 22 Novermber 2010).63. For more description of these and other projects see http://www.kuru.co.bw/Home.html

(accessed 22 November 2010).64. At http://www.kuru.co.bw/letloa.html (accessed 22 November 2010).65. Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’.66. Hopson, ‘Language Rights and the San’.67. Ibid.68. Namibian government officials have recently indicated a willingness to consider indigenous

rights arguments; if this happens an even stronger push could be made to increase access tomother tongue education in government schools. At the time of writing it remains to see howthese statements will be translated into action.

69. Robeyns, ‘Three Models of Education’.70. N. Crawhall, ‘Africa and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’, The

International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 1 (2011), this issue.

Notes on contributorJennifer Hays is a research fellow in comparative indigenous studies in the Department ofArchaeology and Social Anthropology at the University of Tromsø, Norway. She has beenworking with San communities in Botswana and Namibia since 1998, both as a researcher and asa consultant for the development and evaluation of community-based education and developmentinitiatives. Her PhD thesis (State University of New York, Albany, 2007) focuses on the problemssurrounding the transition of Nyae Nyae Ju/’hoansi children and youth to the formal educationsystem. Her other publications explore issues related to indigenous rights and education, such asindigenous knowledge, differences in pedagogical styles and how education relates to economicopportunities in the area.



http://www.wimsanet.org/

http://www.kalaharipeoples.org/projects.html

http://www.kalaharipeoples.org/projects.html

http://www.cybertracker.org/

http://www.kuru.co.bw/

http://www.kuru.co.bw/bokamosoorg.html

http://www.kuru.co.bw/Home.html

http://www.kuru.co.bw/letloa.html

Educational rights for indigenous communities in Botswana and Namibia

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