Staff Reporter
RESIDENTS of the Oneshila informal settlement at Oshakati in the Oshana Region agree that male children in the area are ill-disciplined, but disagree on who is to blame.
Some blame the management of the local school, while others fault parents.
Boys — mostly learners at Ehenye Primary School — have turned a local community hall into an indoor soccer field and have vandalised at least one electricity socket.
Expressions of disapproval and scolding by residents have only attracted insults from the boys.
The children play at the centre immediately after school, still wearing their school uniforms, and again later in the afternoon.
Meme Beata Namweya, whose house is adjacent to the community hall, said she once tried to advise the children to stop but was openly insulted.
“At my age, to be insulted by kids the age of my grandchildren is unacceptable, but there is nothing I could do,” she said.
Agatus Antanga, secretary of Oneshila’s Community Development Committee, said he too intervened.
“One small boy wanted to know whether the community centre was my workplace, but before I could say anything further, he shouted to his peers: ‘Guys, let us leave this place because this old man is behaving as if this centre was his private residence’,” Antanga said.
Hilma Augustus said accusing the school management is unfair.
“The school is not to blame for the learners’ after-school misbehaviour. Parents are,” she said.
She also pointed out the apparent lack of recreational facilities in the informal settlements as the reason why kids decided to play in a hall meant to host community meetings.
Another resident urged the Government to intervene on the behaviour of “nowadays children”, not only in Oneshila but countrywide.
“We, as parents, can’t do anything anymore,” the resident said.
Yet another resident expressed the view that children disobeying parents and community elders stems from Bible study no longer being part of the school curriculum.
Meme Namweya proposed a way forward: a joint effort by parents in Oneshila and the neighbouring Evululuko informal settlement and the management of Ehenye Primary School to discipline the children, or risk having disobedient children who grow up to become disobedient adults.
