Namibia country report

Low levels of education further limited the options of beneficiaries in Omaheke, who attainedmarkedly lower levels than those in Hardap. As Table 25 indicates, 61% and 71% of thebeneficiaries at Drimiopsis and Skoonheid had no formal education, compared to only 14%in Hardap. The numbers of beneficiaries at Drimiopsis and Skoonheid who had completedprimary school were more or less the same at 5%, but lower than the 14% in Hardap.Table 25: Education levels of group resettlement scheme beneficiariesDrimiopsis Skoonheid HardapNo formal education 61% 71% 14%Some primary schooling 26% 19% 36%Primary school completed 4% 5% 14%Some secondary schooling 4% 0% 29%Secondary school completed 4% 0% 7%Tertiary education completed 0% 5% -Total 100 % 100% 100%Even though one fifth to one quarter of the beneficiaries in Omaheke had acquired someprimary education, for many this was too little and too long ago to have retained literacy andnumeracy skills. Many respondents were unable to state their age, partly due to an inability tocount. An example is Karolina, who was born on a farm close to Skoonheid and Drimiopsis,and schooled for only one year. She knew the first two letters of the English alphabet, and wasable to count to 30. She could not write anything but her name, and did not know her age.The low levels of education are undoubtedly connected to the fact that the majority of thesebeneficiaries were born and bred on commercial farms, which limited their access to schools.Moreover, until the Gquina Primary School was established in Omaheke in the 1990s, mothertongueeducation for speakers of San languages was unavailable. Where beneficiaries didhave access to schools, their parents were too poor to pay school fees and therefore had towithdraw their children.The life histories of many beneficiaries illustrate these difficulties, an example being thehistory of John. Born on a commercial farm in 1957, he had never been to school and couldnot read or write. He started to work on the farm, looking after cattle, at a very young age.He spent his entire working life on the same farm and left with his wife when the owner diedin 2004. The latter’s son took over, and asked John to stay on, but John wanted to rest fora while as he had worked continuously for many years. After leaving the farm, the coupleheard that government was helping people like them. They decided to go to Drimiopsis,where they had stayed on a few occasions in the past, to find out what they could do there,and settled there permanently.William was born in Kalkfeld in 1930. He started his working life as a worker on a bridgeconstruction site in Omaheke. Thereafter he worked on four different commercial farmsand finally on a government research farm in Omaheke. He did general farm work suchas repairing fences, making cut lines, tending to livestock and pumping water. Although hedid not have a driver’s license, his tasks on the research farm included driving workers126 ● Livelihoods after land reform: Namibia country report (2010)