Steenkamp calls for revival and language preservation at Nama Cultural Festival

Education minister Sanet Steenkamp has urged renewed focus on cultural revival and indigenous language preservation at the Nama Cultural Festival at Keetmanshoop on Friday.

“This festival is not only a space for collective memory and action to revitalise our cultural preferences, but also to address generational gaps that may exist. It offers an expression of our shared determination to advance towards unity, growth, prosperity, and peace,” the minister of education, innovation, youth, sport, arts and culture said.

Steenkamp mentioned transformative changes in education and national identity.

“We’ve witnessed transformation – not only in education reform, but also in the growing embrace of our shared histories, our own histories and our related identities,” she said.

She said preserving cultural identity as well as promoting indigenous languages remain a national priority.

“The work of reclaiming and preserving our cultural identities should not only be a community effort, it must and is a national imperative. Our commitment to including indigenous languages in the formal curriculum is not symbolic. It’s all strategic,” she said.

“The language . . . must be spoken first. Parents are the first teachers of language.”

Steenkamp urged parents to enrol their children for Waipo classes and for young people to be trained as indigenous language teachers, concluding that more scholarships must be made available to meet this demand.

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