Congress of South African Students
new student organization in South Africa after the previous burned in 1977
The Congress of South African Students (COSAS) is an anti-apartheid student organisation established in 1979 in the wake of the June 16 Soweto Uprisings in 1976 in South Africa.
Background
COSAS was formed in June 1979 after the South African Students' Movement was banned in 1977. It set out to organise black students at secondary, night, technical and teacher training schools as well as correspondence colleges. The COSAS was formed from exile by President Oliver Tambo and COSAS's first president was Ephraim Mogale. In its first two years COSAS took up two commemorative campaigns that authorities saw as African National Congress-supporting: the 1979 hanging of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) guerrilla Solomon Mahlangu and the centenary of the Zulu victory over British troops at Isandhlwana.
In 1982, COSAS adopted the theme "Student-worker action" and promoted the formation of youth congresses to serve the interests of young workers and unemployed youth. The organization provided support to striking workers and community struggles around issues such as transport increases, rent hikes and the like.
In 1983, the COSAS welcomed the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and played a key role in the formation of the regional UDF structures in all of the provinces. It saw the UDF as representing a common platform to fight for a free and democratic South Africa.
Throughout the 1980s, under the banner of COSAS, students staged a variety of resistance tactics like boycotts and strikes.
“Congress of South African Students” enters the record as new student organization in South Africa after the previous burned in 1977. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Congress, South and African can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5160891. VIAF identifies the subject as 147712021. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1976, 1977 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Congress of South African Students” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.