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- 221 - “OSHINGLISHA OSHAPI EYI ETIA TEKA”: ENGLISH, COLONIAL POWER, AND EDUCATION IN 20TH CENTURY OWAMBO AND 21ST CENTURY NAMIBIA66 By Rodney K. Hopson Introduction The first part of the title, “Oshinglisha oshapi eyi etia teka” or “English is the key that will never be broken” comes from the oldest respondent of a language study, Meme Julia Wambita who, while sitting on the ground of her home in rural northern Namibia in 2001, remarked at my questions about the role of English at her school during her attendance in the late 1930s. What she would say to me would be incredibly vivid years later as one of several themes that depicted the historical language ideology of English in Namibia and its unassailabilty but unattainability, as Neville Alexander (2000a) would explore later, in the case of English in southern Africa. As Meme Wambita would foretell, these themes would reverberate leading up to Namibia’s political independence in 1990 (Hopson, 2005). As a product of St. Mary’s Anglican Church School at Odibo, Meme Wambita would have been part of a larger group of students influenced by the political and educational symbol of the school. Founded in 1924 by Father George (“Lukenge”) Tobias, the school represented a political, religious, and linguistic departure from the norm in the northern area of early 21st century Owamboland. What makes St. Mary’s at Odibo particularly interesting is the school’s efforts to promote English as symbol of freedom from the apartheid and colonialist influences that would take shape throughout much of the country. St. Mary’s at Odibo was no ordinary school. As an educational training ground for much of the ruling elite in the current South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) government, it was perhaps the earliest known influence and the largest spread of the English language at the schooling level in pre-Independent Namibia. The school’s use of English as language of instruction would further serve as symbol of resistance to Afrikaans and emblematic of Namibia’s language policy and its hope for English, many decades before Independence. 66 Acknowledgements to Birgit Brock-Utne for supportive and encouraging ideas since our meeting in 1999 at Comparative International and Education Society Annual Conference in Orlando, her incredible inspiration as a colleague and teacher for the way she motivates and endears her students, and her extreme generosity. Portions of this paper are drawn from a 2006 Oxford Ethnography Conference presentation. - 222 Official English, Education, and Knowledge I resonate with ideas of official language and official education as a way of extending Michael Apple’s (2000: 9) official knowledge notions. To him, the reconsideration and rethinking of “what education is for, what and whose knowledge is considered legitimate, and who has the right to answer these questions” stands at the heart of “struggles by powerful groups and social movements to make their knowledge legitimate, to defend or increase their patterns of social mobility, and to increase their power in the larger social arena” (Ibid). I use these and expand Apple’s concept as a way in which to view how language decisions inevitably purport contestations and struggles over social identity and social power. The development and support of official English and English-Only in Namibia and in southern Africa, as others suggest (Pütz, 1995; Kamwangamalu, 2003) was hardly a capricious or non-historically influenced act. The confluence of historical developments both within and outside Namibia over the 21st century leading up to the 21st of March, 1990 were the result of decisions by powerful social, political, and religious entities at the national and international levels over decades to not only change the socio-political situation in the country, but also the language of instruction and the lingua franca from Afrikaans to English. These decisions helped to rethink and reconsider whose knowledge and education was legitimate and what would be the educational, linguistic, and political frames and ideologies of referent for the future generations in schools and society. The cultural politics of official knowledge (Apple, 1996), like the cultural politics of official English, requires understanding what counts as knowledge (and language) and who has the power to define, appropriate, and organise it in schooling and the larger society. The events that would take place at St. Mary’s in the first part of the 20th century were harbinger for official English decisions over a half century later at the country’s...

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