It is generally recognised that mass popular struggles during the 1970s and 1980s played a pivotal role in eroding apartheid and creating the conditions for the transition to democracy in South Africa. However, few works on political resistance to apartheid and capitalism during this period have provided a detailed analysis of a specific movement or organisation - its historical development, social base, ideological and political character, role and contribution, immediate and more long-term significance, the specificity of the particular social sphere and terrain it occupied and its movement and activities on this terrain.

Even if the movements and organisations of particular social groups like black South African workers and the more nebulous and amorphous "the people" have not been extensively analysed, black workers and "the people" have at least featured prominently in narratives of resistance politics. The same, however, cannot be said for other social groups, one of which is students. Of course, in accounts of political opposition to apartheid and capitalism during the late 1970s and 1980s, the campaigns and activities of black secondary and higher education students and their militancy and role as catalysts and detonators of anti-apartheid political struggles has been noted frequently. Yet, despite massive and continuous social conflict around education, the remarkable continuity of student activism and militancy over more than two decades, the persistence of national student organisations through intense repression and their salient contribution to the winning of democracy, student politics in South Africa has been analysed little. Given this, it is not surprising that the analysis of student movements or specific student organisations is also virtually non-existent.

Matona has suggested that one reason that mass organisations have not received much attention is that analyses of political resistance in South Africa "have over-emphasised the spontaneity of the popular struggles" with the result that formal organisations have been "largely treated as incidental" (1992:1). The purpose of this book is to contribute to rectifying the dearth of analysis of mass democratic anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa by examining two black higher education organisations that span a period of over two decades between 1968 and 1990.

One is the South African National Students' Congress (SANSCO), which between 1979 and 1986 went by the name of the Azanian Students' Organisation (AZASO). Established in 1979 and the largest and most influential of the 1980s national organisations representing black higher education students, SANSCO was an important and integral component of the broad mass democratic movement in South Africa. The other is the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), formed in 1968 and popularly associated with the person of Steve Biko. SASO gave birth to the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, was the leading formation within this movement, and did much to revitalise black opposition politics during the 1970s before it was banned by the apartheid government in 1977.

The focus on SASO and SANSCO is of five-fold importance. First, 1998 represented the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of SASO and the twenty-first anniversary of its banning, while 1999 marks the twentieth anniversary of the formation of SANSCO. This, makes it an opportune moment to reflect on the historical contribution of the two organisations. With regard to SASO it is especially crucial to be reminded that the doctrine that it developed, Black Consciousness, was a response to particular institutional conditions and experiences. In the current context of calls to 'forget the past and embrace the future' and the rhetoric of democratic South Africa as a 'rainbow nation' and non-racial society it is all too easy to neglect to pose the extent to which the previous institutional conditions have indeed been fundamentally transformed. Such an omission could mean the failure to grasp the possible relationship between institutional conditions and, if no longer Black Consciousness, the emerging notion of an 'African renaissance'.

In relation to continued debate around issues of 'race' and identity, the book hopefully highlights that approaches such as Black Consciousness, concerns with identity and certain exclusivist forms of organisation need not be retrogressive. On the contrary, they can be progressive and make an important contribution to true non-racialism and national culture. In today's parlance, to recognise 'difference' and attempt to deal with it is not necessarily to elevate and ossify difference. Nor is it to succumb to a 'politics of difference' and to turn one's back on a 'politics of equal recognition'. Indeed, it may be that genuinely 'equal recognition' will only be possible when, with great honesty and patience, we learn to work through the issue of 'difference'.

Second, we live in a period where there is a danger of critical historical and sociological work being obliterated at the altar of ‘relevance' and ‘immediatism', of knowledge, techniques and quick-fix solutions to fuel economic growth and accommodate new forms of social regulation. This could have grave consequences for the intellectual life of, and a humane, environmentally sustainable social development path for, our country. Instead, I concur with Tosh who writes that "historical knowledge can have important practical implications [but that] the kind of enquiry whose sole object is to re-create a particular conjuncture in the past remains valid and important in its own right" (1984:128).

Third, despite an authoritarian and repressive political order and an array of coercive and ideological instruments to maintain national oppression and class domination, the apartheid government ultimately failed to eradicate dissent and crush political opposition in South Africa. While not without failings and weaknesses, the mass student organisations and student militants played a vital and dynamic role in the winning of democracy. It is appropriate that in accounts of popular resistance in South Africa the contribution of students and their organisations, and their often indomitable spirit and selfless bravery and courage be recognised and acknowledged.

Fourth, each successive generation of student activists in South Africa appears to be ever more poorly informed about the history of student struggles and activism and the history, role and contribution of their own and other student organisations. While accounts of past organisations, struggles and experiences may not necessarily provide answers to contemporary and immediate questions, for student activists a knowledge of the history of student politics and student organisations is always a useful reminder of their own location in the stream of history and may also be suggestive in other ways. Finally, South Africa is a country with a particularly rich history of student activism and militancy yet this is hardly obvious when one examines the literature on student activism. Thus, there is a need for research and analysis around student politics, and student movements and organisations, and a need to share the South African experience with activists and scholars in other parts of the world.

The aim of this book is not to provide an account of the entire spectrum of black student political activism within South Africa. Neither is it to deliver a comprehensive history of SASO and SANSCO. Rather, its purpose is a sensitive historical sociological analysis of the key national black higher education student political organisations during the period 1968 to 1990. More specifically, the principal aims are to understand:

• The ideological, political and organisational constitution, identity, qualities and features of SASO and   SANSCO, and their intellectual, political and social determinants;
• The role played by the two organisations in the educational, political and other spheres and the factors that shaped their role; and,
• In relation to the particular structural and conjunctural conditions under which SASO and SANSCO operated, their salient contributions to the popular struggle against apartheid education and race, class and gender oppression and their significance in the struggle for educational transformation, national liberation and democracy in South Africa.

Beyond this, a further aim is to compare and contrast SASO and SANSCO with respect to their character, role and significance and to attempt to account for their similarities and differences. To interpret and understand the character, role and significance of SASO and SANSCO it is necessary to first establish an appropriate conceptual, empirical and analytical foundation. This entails:

• The development of a conceptual framework to guide analysis and interpretation;
• An account of the conditions within apartheid society and especially higher education that constituted the immediate context in, and terrain on, which SASO and SANSCO operated;
• A description and analysis of the ideological and political orientations of SASO and SANSCO, their goals, principles and policies and the political, economic and social determinants of these;
• A description and analysis of the mobilisation, organisation and collective action moments of the activities of SASO and SANSCO in relation to students and other social groups and with respect to educational, political and other issues; and,
• An assessment of the particular contribution of SASO and SANSCO to political opposition to apartheid and capitalism and to the struggle for democracy in South Africa, and the manner and forms in which, and extent to which, their activities reproduced and/or undermined and/or transformed social relations, institutions and practices.

Each of these themes, of course, beg a number of empirical and analytical questions and why these themes are especially pertinent requires some motivation.

My point of departure is a number of assumptions and propositions which, taken together, constitute a conceptual framework which has informed and guided my investigation and shaped the analysis that is advanced. Here, I want to make clear and explicit some of the key general points of departure of the investigation resulting in this book, leaving a detailed discussion of the more specific assumptions and presuppositions to Chapter 1.

All research is theory-laden and knowledge of the real world is appropriated through concepts and theories that to a greater or lesser extent, and more or less successfully, illuminate the particular objects of enquiry. Moreover, given that it is impossible to collect and sort through every bit of information and data to do with a particular object of enquiry, it is necessary to be selective and have some way of deciding what data are pertinent and essential to one's enquiry. In other words, once the aims of research have been clearly articulated, investigation and analysis and knowledge production requires a conceptual framework to structure and guide data collection and analysis through the posing of issues and questions, some seemingly mundane and obvious, but others, hopefully, refreshingly new and imaginative.

My starting point in the investigation of SASO and SANSCO has been to review three different kinds of literature. First, I have closely examined the limited South African and more extensive international theoretical and empirical literature pertaining to student politics, student movements and organisations, students and social class and students as intellectuals. In addition, I have selectively read theoretically informed case studies of social movements; the theoretical literature on social movements and have also read around the problematic of social structure and agency. Finally, I have reviewed writing on the political economy of South Africa; on education and, more especially, higher education; reviewed literature which debates the appropriate theorisation of the South African social order and the appropriate platforms and strategies for political mobilisation; and have read extensively various accounts of political opposition and resistance.

The aim of this review has not been to lay the basis for intervening in theoretical and conceptual issues, tempting as this is due to the atheoretical, empiricist and conceptually weak nature of much of the literature on student politics. The focus of this book, however, is less theoretical as much as historical and interpretive. Thus, the literature review has been carried out principally to illuminate, sensitise, guide and be suggestive - in short, to play a heuristic function - with respect to appropriate methodology, ways of seeing, avenues of analysis and questions to be confronted. In this regard, there exists a literature on student activism that poses particular questions and needs to be drawn on for analysing SASO and SANSCO. At the same time, I argue that recent advances in the field of social movement theory make it an especially fertile source of important new issues and imaginative questions which help to generate a more extensive and deeper knowledge and understanding of organisations like SASO and SANSCO.

A second assumption of the book is that the character of an organisation and its activities and significance cannot be understood by focusing exclusively on the organisation alone. Individuals, organisations, social movements and political parties operate under definite structural conditions. As Marx puts it,

[m]en make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past (quoted in Tosh, 1984:140).

That is to say, humans do "make their own history" and social relations and institutions and practices are ultimately the outcome of the actions of individuals, organisations and movements pursuing particular intentions. However, the variety and conflict of these intentions and the weight of the past in the form of ideas and institutions shaping and setting limits to the possibilities of action ensures that in practice history becomes a record of the unintended consequences of the actions of individuals, organisations and movements (Abrams, 1982:34). The two-sided interaction of action and structure means that social relations, institutions and practices are the both the medium and outcome of individual and organisational actions and social struggles. It is thus the dynamic relation between the purposes, intentions and actions of SASO and SANSCO and social structure that must necessarily inform any sensitive and balanced analysis of the two organisations.

In terms of this perspective the book includes specific chapters that discuss the particular structural and conjunctural conditions that characterised the historical periods during which SASO and SANSCO existed. These chapters serve three functions. First, they illuminate the social relations and immediate conditions in the political and higher education spheres under which SASO and SANSCO operated. Second, they contribute to the understanding of some of the determinants of the character, role and activities of SASO and SANSCO. Third, they facilitate analysis of the extent to which SASO and SANSCO reproduced and/or altered, undermined and transformed social relations and conditions. Overall, the consideration of both social conditions and of the ideology, politics, activities and effects of SASO and SANSCO enables a more sensitive and balanced assessment of the significance of the two organisations.

The allocation and attribution of significance and character to an organisation is, of course, not a neutral or innocent act or unaffected by conceptual approach and methodology. Thus, an important task is to decide what approach and criteria should be employed in assessing SASO and SANSCO and in drawing conclusions about their character, role and significance.

One approach to the task of interpretation could be to concede that knowledge around these issues is intrinsic to the actors themselves and to accept their own definitions and conceptions as contained in their documents, reports, statements, and in speeches of officials. If this settles the question of how one assesses, it also suggests an answer to the issue of who should assess. However, a point made by Feinberg in relation to historical explanation is pertinent here. He writes:

[i]t is easy to understand why...scholars might want to take the participants' understanding as the bottom line of historical explanation. It has the appearance of avoiding the elitism of placing the scholar in the role of the expert who understands the acts of people better than the participants themselves. I think that a better way to avoid elitism is to share one's interpretation with others - the participants (or those who identify with them) - and to take their responses seriously. Avoiding elitism, however, should not be thought to require that we shed our own best understanding for the understanding of another (Feinberg, 1981:237).

Feinberg is surely correct for otherwise the meanings and voices of participants are not only unduly privileged but also treated as unproblematic. There is no critical interrogation of meanings and self-definitions or dialogue with other empirical evidence, which could, indeed, be deemed irrelevant. Such an approach is more accurately described as ‘propaganda', characteristic of the ‘official histories' of some organisations, rather than serious scholarly work.

Another approach to interpretation could be to concentrate on various elements internal to an organisation, such as social class origins and location of membership, ideology, programme and organisational activities. However, as I will argue, membership alone is a poor indicator of political position and thus also character. Furthermore, other elements are also inadequate determinants of role, character and significance if they are not analysed in relation to historical structural and conjunctural conditions.

A third approach could be to analyse SASO and SANSCO largely in relation to one's theorisation of the South African social order, and normative definition of appropriate resistance ideology, political goals, programme and strategies. In this case, the extent to which SASO and SANSCO conformed to these would become the crucial determinant of how they are assessed. As will be seen this has, indeed, been the way that SASO has been assessed by some activist scholars. Such an approach is, however, flawed in at least two respects.

First, there is the problem of arbitrariness in that one's own conception of appropriate ideology, political goals and strategies of political struggle becomes the sole and privileged basis for deriving conclusions about an organisation. The extent to which an organisation conforms with one's normative criteria drives analysis, and different conceptions of the social order and political goals and strategies which may yield alternate interpretations of character, role and significance are summarily precluded. Especially where an organisation that is the object of analysis does indeed have a different view of appropriate political goals, programme and strategies, a hostility to its conceptions may result in a myopia with respect to its actual contributions and real significance.

Second, such an approach is, in practice, fixated with the internal elements of organisations and is intolerant and voluntarist. The emphasis is very much on whether an organisation has the "correct" goals, strategies, forms of mobilisation and the like. Moreover, such aspects either tend to be defined in isolation from structural and conjunctural conditions or in terms of very optimistic readings of the possibilities afforded by these conditions for collective action and social change. In other words, there is little serious consideration of the constraints on action and the manner in which the internal elements of organisations may themselves be shaped by social conditions.

If one rejects such approaches how then is the task of interpretation to be approached? First, organisation's self-definitions and the meanings given by participants need to be duly taken into account but not be privileged. Second, internal elements such as ideology and programmes are important but inadequate in themselves. Third, analysis of internal elements in relation to a normative definition of the appropriate processes and goals of political struggle are of some value as long as one acknowledges that there is no single incontestable definition and that alternate definitions exist. Ultimately, however, of fundamental importance is a sensitivity to structural and conjunctural conditions, especially in the political and higher education spheres, how these conditions shaped the responses and activities of SASO and SANSCO, established limits and opportunities for action, and were also re-shaped by these organisations.

For various reasons this book has been almost a decade in the making. During this time my focus, analytical framework and, thus necessarily, analysis and interpretation have all undergone important changes. It is useful to signal the changes and the reasons behind them.

Initially, the book was to focus only on SANSCO. Part of the motivation for investigating SANSCO was my involvement in the organisation, first as vice-president of the University of Cape Town branch of SANSCO, and thereafter as national co-ordinator of the Education Charter campaign (1982-83) and projects officer on the national executive (1983-84). However, while I was deeply committed to the goals and policies of SANSCO and to the project of national liberation, I was not interested in producing an official and sanitised history of the organisation. Instead, I sought to draw on my experience of SANSCO to produce a disinterested critical analysis of the organisation as a contribution to the literature on student politics and to informing and improving the future practice of SANSCO. As Tosh writes, "myth-making about the past, however desirable the end it may serve, is incompatible with learning from the past" (1984:17).

In the investigation of SANSCO, the analysis of SASO was to be confined to a brief background chapter which would have situated SANSCO in the stream of black higher education student politics and would have also indicated the continuities and discontinuities between SANSCO and SASO. However, as I read the available literature on SASO it became clear that there existed multiple and very different interpretations of its character, role and significance. I became excited to understand the reasons for these differing interpretations and to develop my own interpretation of SASO. I thus redefined my focus to include a more detailed investigation of SASO.

Since such an investigation would also provide the basis for a more extended and rigorous comparative analysis of SANSCO and SASO, I also made such a comparison an additional aim of my investigation. I reasoned that extending the investigation in this way would reveal more sharply the relationship between historical conditions and the ideology, politics and activities of organisations. In view of the fact that my political commitments and organisational affiliations made me lean towards a generally negative assessment of SASO and the Black Consciousness movement, this also afforded me the opportunity to analyse the organisation more rigorously and dispassionately.

During the first few years of research and writing, my approach was to treat the ideology, politics and activities of an organisation as the essential markers of its character, role and significance. Increasingly, however, I came to appreciate that it was crucial to be sensitive to the structural and conjunctural conditions under which an organisation operated. This meant that instead of interpreting organisations largely in relation to their internal elements, it was of vital importance to pay serious attention to their actual effects on contemporary social relations, institutions, thinking and practices. Later, in the course of other research and teaching I also became exposed to literature around social movements. Here, to my excitement, I discovered a theoretical perspective that was analytically suggestive in numerous ways and enabled me to pose interesting and refreshing new questions. Drawing on the work of key social movement theorists pushed the analysis of SASO and SANSCO in new directions and has facilitated a richer understanding of their character, role and significance.

Since I began work on this book after a long period of intense and full-time political activism, during the initial years of research and writing I was not always easily able to make the transition from political writing in the service of the liberation movement to disinterested and critical scholarship. It is also possible that my early analysis was affected by political prejudices towards Black Consciousness organisations. However, I am confident that the chapters that follow reflects the kind of disinterest that is vital to good critical scholarship. As a result, the analysis and conclusions of this book are substantially different from what they would have been had the book been completed ten years earlier. One indicator of this is my interpretation of SASO. Whereas my initial evaluation of SASO was extremely negative, the in-depth investigation of SASO, changes in my analytical approach and my intellectual development has brought me to appreciate the positive character and role of the organisation and has led me to conclude that it was of crucial significance to the struggle for national liberation. At the same time, whereas I previously adhered closely to the negative interpretation of SASO by a particular scholar, I now develop a critique of both his analytical framework and conclusions.

Finally, the book has also been shaped to an extent by the political changes in South Africa. Prior to 1990, for reasons related to the organisational security of SANSCO and the personal security of its officials, I would have been obliged not to pursue certain lines of analysis. Today, it is, of course, possible to analyse SANSCO openly and fully and I am thus able to comment on issues such as the influence of the ANC on SANSCO and the role of SANSCO in relation to the ANC.

I have relied principally on documentary research and have drawn extensively on a wide variety of documents. In the case of SANSCO since a secondary literature does not exist, extensive use has been made of primary documents in the form of articles in commercial, non-profit community and student newspapers and magazines, public speeches of officials, organisational materials in the form of national, regional and local newsletters and pamphlets and official documents relating to national and regional conferences and meetings.

Three points are pertinent with respect to my sources of data. In the first place, articles, reports and interviews with officials in student newspapers like SASPU National and in community newspapers have had to be treated with caution. My post-SANSCO involvement as editor of a community newspaper made me aware that generally the "alternative press" and popular journalists attempted to follow faithfully the Guinea-Bissau revolutionary Amilcar Cabral's dictum "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories". However, the fact that this press included as its goal the popularisation of anti-apartheid organisations and also acted as a mouthpiece of popular organisations meant that internal conflicts, problems and weaknesses of these organisations were not always reported. Moreover, the strength and support-base of organisations and the extent to which their mobilisations and collective actions were successful and victorious was also sometimes over-stated.

Second, the organisational newsletters, pamphlets and conference minutes that have been drawn on had been part of my personal collection during my involvement in SANSCO or were collected later for the purposes of this book. Since I am familiar with the form and style of student media I have no doubts about the authenticity of these documents. Furthermore, my involvement in SANSCO has provided me with privileged access to the real and underlying meaning of certain phrases and terms that are employed in SANSCO media. Finally, SANSCO was generally lax in the recording, production and safe-keeping of minutes of national conferences and meetings. This, together with the seizure of records by the security police on various occasions, has meant that very little survives in the form of official minutes and records. Consequently, much reliance has had to be placed on reports in commercial, student and community newspapers and in organisational newsletters for information relating to the themes, concerns and outcomes of national conferences.

In the case of SASO a secondary literature in the form of academic and activist descriptions and analyses, some of it penned by contemporary and ex-SASO members themselves, is available and has been drawn on in two ways. First, it has been used to develop an empirical and, to a lesser extent, an analytical foundation for the interpretation of SASO. Second, the various interpretations of SASO that are advanced by this literature have been critically interrogated and have provided a partial basis for my interpretation of SASO.

I have also made extensive use of primary documents in the form of official SASO newsletters, reports and minutes of the proceedings of national conferences, training workshops and executive meetings, much of which was obtained from a contemporary SASO sympathiser. SASO was considerably more scrupulous than SANSCO with regard to the recording and production of conference and workshop minutes and reports and these are important sources of empirical data. Numerous sets have survived and I was able to compare the documents that were provided to me with others held in various libraries. Moreover, as a consequence of the 1975-76 court trial involving SASO leaders, SASO documents are also part of public court records. The primary documents enabled me to fill numerous gaps in description and analysis around SASO's organisational infrastructure and structure and especially around SASO activities in relation to higher education. However, their use was also stimulated by my desire to investigate more intensively the format, themes, concerns and discourse of SASO gatherings and to develop a more extensive and comprehensive empirical base for my interpretation of SASO. Interviews by scholars of ex-SASO activists and critical analyses by ex-SASO members and BC sympathisers have been useful in putting aspects of the contents of SASO documents in perspective.

To complement documentary research, interviews were conducted with select persons who held key positions during different periods of SANSCO's existence. The existence of a mutual familiarity between myself and all the interviewees facilitated access, meant that interviewees were generally at ease and also encouraged an openness on their part. The interviews enabled interviewees to share their conceptions of the essential ideological and political orientation of SANSCO and its determinants, and to speak about issues which could not be spoken or written about previously without inviting repression. I was also able to test my understanding of the formation and very early days of SANSCO with one particular interviewee.

I did not conduct any interviews around SASO because a number of ex-SASO activists have penned analytical articles on the organisation and some of the secondary analyses of SASO draw on interviews with various officials. I have been able to make effective use of these and they have been, together with the primary documents that were available to me, more than sufficient for my purposes.

For the investigation of SANSCO I could draw on my involvement in student politics during the late 1970s, in SANSCO during the early 1980s, my editorship of a community newspaper between 1983 and 1986, involvement in the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) in the late 1980s and on my role as an advisor and consultant to SANSCO activists. While for ideological and political reasons I did not join SANSCO until 1982, I nonetheless observed closely and with considerable interest the formation and early development of the organisation. My official positions in SANSCO involved me in a diverse range of activities. These included attending local, regional and national meetings, workshops and conferences; participating in debates and discussions around questions of ideology, programme, policy, strategy and tactics; speaking on behalf of the organisation at public demonstrations and meetings; visiting campuses to assist in the mobilisation and organisational efforts of local branches, and representing SANSCO at meetings of other popular organisations and movements.

All these activities provided valuable first-hand experience and knowledge of SANSCO. However, other occasions such as the time spent with fellow activists during mobilising and organising activities, long road journeys to meetings and informal social gatherings were also fertile periods for learning about SANSCO. On such occasions there were often vigorous individual and small group exchanges around student and national politics and, outside the constraints on discussion imposed by draconian security legislation and security surveillance on official SANSCO meetings, also more open and uninhibited sharing of ideas and views.

After my involvement in SANSCO, my position as editor of a community newspaper which also covered student politics meant that I was able to continue to observe SANSCO closely. There were also numerous and continuous invitations to address SANSCO meetings and workshops, ongoing contact with contemporaries who were still active in the organisation, and meetings with rank and file activists and officials seeking information, assistance or advice. Finally, there was interaction with SANSCO through my participation in the NECC. In all these ways, I continued to be well-positioned with respect to knowledge, information and experiences related to SANSCO.

Finally, twenty years of political activism have also afforded me the opportunity and privilege of countless informal discussions with a large number and generations of student leaders and activists. These have ranged from former SASO leaders to leaders of the predominantly white National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) with which SANSCO was to develop a close alliance; from leaders of student organisations at odds with the ideological and political orientation and strategies of SANSCO, to leaders of the secondary-school student organisation, the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), with whom SANSCO was closely allied. The often animated, candid, fascinating, even humorous, recollections of, and conversations with, past student activists have been invaluable in numerous ways. For example, they sensitised me to the different political and educational conditions that confronted different generations of student leaders and organisations. They also alerted me to the ideological and political contestations that unfolded in SASO during the mid-1970s, and they revealed tensions in relations between SANSCO and NUSAS at some campuses. Thus, as much insight and understanding has been obtained from informal conversations as from the formal interviews.

The book in brief:

In Chapter 1, I discuss the perspectives informing the book. Although the concern here is with theoretical and conceptual issues, the object is less the theorisation of student politics as much the development of a framework for the analysis and interpretation of SASO and SANSCO. The remainder of the book, bar the Conclusion, consists of two parts. Each comprises a number of chapters which focus on conditions in the political and higher education spheres and the analysis and interpretation of the organisations.

In this vein, Part I, comprising Chapters 2, 3 and 4, is primarily devoted to the analysis of SASO. Chapter 2 describes and analyses the particular conditions within society and higher education that confronted black students and SASO, and which constituted the terrain on which it had to move. Apart from a brief sketch of black higher education prior to 1960, the focus is on the period from the banning and exile of the liberation movements in 1960 to the Soweto uprising of 1976-77. This chapter grounds the analysis of the emergence, development and eventual demise of SASO and the activity of interpretation.

Chapter 3 revolves around the emergence of SASO in the late 1960s, and its ideological and political orientations and shifts. Chapter 4 describes and analyses its organisational and mobilisation activities and collective actions, and its position within the Black Consciousness movement. Finally, in Chapter 5 I critically engage some of the key analyses of SASO and advance my interpretation of its character, role and significance.

Part II consists of Chapters 6 to 10 and has as its primary focus SANSCO. The principal concerns here are the description and analysis of SANSCO in order to lay the foundation for the interpretation of its character, role and significance.

In Chapter 6, I focus on the social and higher educational conditions of, first, the period post the Soweto uprising until the declaration of a national State of Emergency in 1986 and, then, of the harshly repressive period of the State of Emergency until De Klerk's liberalisation measures of February 1990. The new political conditions that were a consequence of the Soweto uprising and later the State of Emergency are discussed, these constituting the terrain on which SANSCO moved. In addition, I examine higher education, focusing on the different higher education institutions attended by black students, their location and organisation, relations with the state and corporate capital, student enrolments, and the conditions under which students lived and studied. The object is to pinpoint those features and aspects of the structure and organisation of higher education sphere that conditioned student mobilisation, organisation and activity.

Chapter 7 begins with a discussion of the origins and formation of SANSCO in 1979. Thereafter, it discusses SANSCO's initial politics of student vanguardism, its eventual ideological and political re-orientation, the organisation's approach to the question of the nature of the South African social order, and its programme and policies. In Chapter 8 the focus is on internal organisational aspects, including the composition of its membership, its organisational infrastructure on the campuses and activities related to organisational development and reproduction. Also addressed is the impact of the States of Emergency between 1986 and 1990 on organisational structures and membership and the implications of SANSCO's proscription in 1988 for its activities.

Chapter 9 is concerned with the form and content of SANSCO's mobilisation of students and other social groups, its collective actions in the educational and political spheres and its relationship with other student and popular organisations. These issues are considered in relation to the period 1979 to mid-1986, which was one of extensive political mobilisation, mushrooming of popular organisations and intense social and political conflict, and the period mid-1986-90 during which SANSCO and other mass organisations and movements experienced severe state repression. Finally, Chapter 10 presents my interpretation of the character, role and significance of SANSCO.

The Conclusion draws together the interpretive analysis of SASO and SANSCO and advances general arguments with respect to their character, role and significance in relation to their internal characteristics, the South African social order and the particular historical conditions under which they operated. In addition, there is a comparison of the respective contributions and significance of SASO and SANSCO.

The fact that one and the same organisation has gone by two names - the Azanian Students' Organisation (AZASO) between 1979 and early December 1986, and the South African National Students' Congress (SANSCO) after early December 1986 - has presented the dilemma of how to refer to the organisation. One option was to refer to the organisation as AZASO/SANSCO but this proved to be clumsy. Another option was to refer to the organisation by the name that it actually went by. In terms of this, the organisation would have been called AZASO until early December 1986 and, thereafter, SANSCO. However, this proved to be difficult because of the essentially thematic rather than chronological nature of the book. I have thus opted for calling the organisation by the single name of SANSCO. As will be seen, the change in name in 1986 signalled no major change in the ideology and politics and activities of the organisation. While I refer to AZASO as SANSCO, when quoting I have however retained the references to "AZASO", and have also cited documents and pamphlets of the organisation by the actual name.