Although Namibia has been independent for more than two decades , the school curriculum remains essentially Eurocentric despite rhetoric on educational reform. Similar to other African countries, Western ideological power continues to dominate postcolonial education, even though political power rests in the hands of African leaders. Employing George Sefa Dei's anti-colonial discursive framework, this article presents a critical analysis of postcolonial education in Namibia and of its failure to adopt a diverse and culturally sensitive school curriculum. This article concludes that, in future reforms, the Namibian education system must incorporate indigenous knowledge not only to preserve this knowledge but also to recognise the multilogicality of knowledge production and its uses in diverse cultural contexts.

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Using the Mafwe ethnic/cultural group as a test case, the situation in post-colonial Namibia can be interpreted to mean that as long as indigenous knowledge remains outside the official school curriculum, ideologically, 'power' continues to elude the people in the country which for over a century had been under the control of various Western colonial powers. It is suggested that there is an urgent need for Namibia to adopt a diverse culturally sensitive form of education which firmly embeds indigenous knowledge in the way the curriculum is conceptualised, designed and delivered. The study used methodologies such as conceptual analysis, oral traditions and phenomenological analysis. The overall findings in the study suggest the need for a comprehensive theory regarding how indigenous knowledge can become the bedrock and not merely an ancillary to a modern education in Namibia. The emphasis here is that learning about indigenous knowledge enables children and the communities they represent to feel authentic, respected and connected.

In Namibia, as is the case in the rest of Africa, different versions of an indigenousknowledge-based education, mainly through the formal setting of traditional initiation schools, was an integral part of community life (Amukugo, 1993; Ray, 1999). The initiation school, of which attendance was compulsory, was a system of formal education with parallels to Western forms of education. For example, initiation schools had a standardized curriculum, set times of instruction, specified age of children for instruction, assessment strategies, use of 'qualified' instructors (experienced village elders) and formal arrangements to recognize and celebrate those who successfully completed the education (Matemba, 2010). The curriculum offered included teaching the neophytes on 'proper' use of language, survival skills, customs, values, marriage, parenting, religion, respect for others, etc. (Mbiti, 1999; Amanze, 2002). As numerous studies have shown, the arrival of missionaries and colonial political powers in Africa from the mid-1800s onwards and their attitudes towards African cultural institutions impacted negatively on the viability of the African indigenous system of education, which was condemned as barbaric, heathen and an impediment to the consolidation of Christianity and Western culture on the continent (