Technical and Vocational Education and the Place of Indigenous Labour in the Mining Industry of Namibia, 1970–1990

Technical and vocational education in colonial Namibia was intricately linked with the growing need for labour in the colonial economy, especially the mining sector. The colonial administration, through the provision of technical education to indigenous Namibians, intended to train able yet docile hands who would provide cheap, unskilled labour to the colonial economy. The inherent flaw in the confinement of the majority of the population to the unskilled labour category unravelled in the 1970s and the 1980s, with internal and external events contributing to an increasing shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labour. The mining industry, in putting forth training initiatives to curb these labour shortages, did not, however, fundamentally deviate from the educational policy set out by the colonial administration. The mines insisted that the solution to the labour shortages was the provision of education to the indigenous population and ‘in most cases, practical rather than academic’ education, a continuation of, rather than a significant break from, prior education policies. Technical and vocational education was thus emphasised by both the colonial administration and the industry to subjugate indigenous labour to its place in the colonial economy.