COSAS members at Emma Sathekge's funeral. Atteridgville attended by fifteen thousand people, 1984

COSAS was formed as a national organization to represent the interests of Black school students in the wake of the Soweto uprisings. During that time the South African Student Movement (SASM), and other organizations of the Black Consciousness (BC) movement were banned. COSAS organized students at secondary and night schools, as well as technical, teacher training and correspondence colleges. Soon they had branches in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Transvaal, Orange Free State and Natal. Branches in the various provinces were set up with the aid of executive members specifically deployed into the various regions for that purpose. Other student organizations also assisted COSAS with establishing its branches in their areas.

Initially a BC orientated organization, a year after its formation COSAS became the first organization to declare its support of the Freedom Charter. Its first president, Ephrahim Mogale was actually a clandestine member of the ANC and was later to be convicted of furthering the aims of the ANC. A guiding principle for COSAS was the view that the ANC was the ?authentic liberation movement? of South Africa. In its first two years COSAS took up two commemorative campaigns that authorities saw as ANC-supporting; the 1979 hanging of MK guerilla Solomon Mahlangu and the centenary of the Zulu victory over British troops at Isandhlwana.

The organization?s principle aims were the conscientizing of students and the wider community to the repressive nature of education in South Africa, and to participate in the drawing up of an educational charter for a future, non-racial democratic education system. Its view was that a democratic education system could only be achieved in a democratic society based on the will of all the people. It recognized that Bantu Education was aimed at controlling and indoctrinating youth and that this could only be changed by transforming the country?s entire political system. Although it was primarily education focused, COSAS identified the relationship between educational and social transformation in its statement of beliefs:

• Students must be organized through democratically elected SRCs ·
• Students must serve the community ??we are members of society before we are students? and thereby show that students can play a progressive role in the broad democratic alliance
• In serving the community, there must be a recognition that students play only a limited role in the overall struggle
• The duty of the students was to lend support to trade unions and community organizations.

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. These facilitated cooperation between school students, young workers and the unemployed youth. This had the dual effect of drawing COSAS into issues which affected young workers and the unemployed youth, and drawing the congresses into school-related struggles. The organization provided essential support to striking workers and community struggles around issues such as transport increases, rent hikes and the like.

COSAS welcomed the formation of the 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. In its early years, COSAS, focused on educational issues but with its alliance to the UDF, by the end of 1984, its students were making demands around educational as well as political issues. By the end of 1984, it had succeeded in drawing community support for the students? struggle when it successfully called on the community to participate in the Transvaal regional stay-away. Demands made by the organization included:

• The withdrawal of the SADF and police from the townships
• Cessation of rent and bus-fare increases
• Resignation of all community councilors
• Unconditional release of all political prisoners and detainees
• Reinstatement of dismissed workers
• Educational reform
• The termination of unfair tax discrimination

By 1985, school boycotts had rendered the schools unworkable and ungovernable and mirrored the collapse of the Black Local Authorities in the townships. Their slogan ?Liberation now, Education later!? saw chaos in schools across the country and resulted in the National Education Crisis Committee being formed in 1986. Eventually COSAS was banned in mid 1985.

At the inaugural conference of the UDF, COSAS claimed a membership of 44 branches nationally and by the end of 1984 it had developed a well organized structure with branches in nearly 50 centers around the country, with the majority of its membership coming from the Eastern Cape and the Southern Transvaal. By the time of its banning in 1985, it was estimated that the organization enjoyed the support of almost 3 million students, or more than half the country?s Black students.

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