Aminuis fights over kindergarten

THE community of Aminuis is trying to wrest control of a kindergarten building from the former school principal, who retired at the end of last year.

The school has been derelict since the start of the year with gates and doors bolted, and has fallen into a dusty state of disrepair while 20 to 30 San children are being denied the opportunity of early childhood education. The school was donated to the Aminuis community by the Red Cross Society of Namibia and the Council of Churches (CCN) through the former Deputy Minister of Education, Clara Bohitile, in 1995. But community members claim that the former principal, Rosa Simana, won’t allow anyone to use the school unless they pay a certain fee per child to her and her husband, Michael. Simana denied this claim, saying she and her husband had requested that the kindergarten be set up, and they had struggled to keep the school afloat since 2003 without any assistance from the community or parents. She said she had never stood in the way of someone else taking over the school, but parents should get children together and hire a teacher before anything could happen. ‘Parents are not very helpful; someone of their own people [the San] should do something about it. The building must be maintained; that is a requirement. We must set terms for the use of the centre. At the moment windows are broken and the ceilings are falling in,’ Simana said. But a senior councillor of the Batswana Ba Namibia Traditional Authority, Damian Lebereki, this week said Simana had repeatedly refused to hand over the building unless she was paid. Bohitile has reportedly called upon the community to get the keys to the building from Simana. Bohitile could not be reached for comment. Lebereki said the community and parents formed a committee a month ago to get the school back for the community. ‘We want things to be fair. Why won’t she give the school?’ Lebereki said. Simana hit back by saying that Lebereki and the traditional authority had never been interested in the school. ‘They never asked why the school was closed,’ she said. Simana is also accused of not allowing the adjacent Mokaleng Roman Catholic Combined School to use the kindergarten buildings for pre-school children. The principal of the Mokaleng school, Elisabeth Khiba-Serogwe, said when the school did not have enough space for Grade 3 pupils, Simana gave the school permission to offer classes at the kindergarten for only two months last year.The Grade 3 children are now accommodated in the Catholic school’s science laboratory. ‘The kindergarten is very valuable for the school; we still cannot accommodate pre-primary learners,’ Khiba-Serogwe said. She suggested that her school be given control of the kindergarten key on behalf of the community.

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