Our universities should be the guardians of knowledge and culture.
Instead, they are becoming the place where Oshikwanyama is being quietly destroyed. In some Oshikwanyama and Oshindonga classes, lecturers are teaching the entire course in Oshindonga or in Oshikwanyama.
This is not a minor mistake; it is a serious problem that is confusing students, failing them, and erasing a language that belongs to thousands of Namibians.
The damage in the classroom is immediate and real. Students enrol for Oshikwanyama because it is their mother tongue. They want to learn how to read, write, and speak it correctly, and to understand the proverbs, stories and grammar that belong to their people.
But they sit in lectures where explanations, questions and examples are all given in Oshindonga.
The two dialects are related, but they are not the same. Words change meaning, and some words do not exist at all. So students spend the whole lecture trying to translate in their heads instead of learning.
They leave more confused than when they came in. Then they are examined in Oshikwanyama and are expected to pass. Many do not – not because they are weak, but because they were taught in the wrong language. Others have simply gone silent, too ashamed to keep asking what it means.
The consequences go far beyond one failed test. When a university teaches one dialect through another, it sends a message that Oshikwanyama or Oshindonga does not matter enough to be taught properly.
That is how languages die. If our own institutions cannot protect our first languages, then who will? We are raising a generation that will grow up speaking a mixed, broken version of their mother tongue and losing the cultural depth that comes with it.
Every dialect carries its own songs, idioms, praise names and history. Teaching Oshikwanyama through Oshindonga cuts students off from that heritage. It is cultural erasure happening inside a lecture hall. It also violates the spirit of Namibia’s language policy, which promises to develop and respect all our national languages equally.
This issue is very serious, and it cannot be ignored any longer. The higher education ministry and universities’ management must act now. First, enforce a simple rule: Oshikwanyama must be taught by lecturers who are fluent in Oshikwanyama, using textbooks and materials written in Oshikwanyama.
Namibia has fought to protect its languages and its identity.
We cannot allow carelessness in a classroom to undo that work.
Teach Oshikwanyama in Oshikwanyama, and Oshindonga in Oshindonga.
Our students, our language, and our future deserve that basic respect.
– Jairus Haufiku
