National Union of South African Students
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National Union of South African Students (NUSAS)
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| Founded | 1924 |
| Dissolved | 2 July 1991 |
| Ideology | liberalism and radicalism |
The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for liberalism and later radicalism in South African student anti-apartheid politics. Its mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.
NUSAS was founded in 1924 under the guidance of Leo Marquard, at a conference at Grey College by members of the Student Representative Councils (SRC) of South African Universities. The union was made up mostly of students from English-language South African universities. Afrikaans-speaking leaders walked out between 1933 and 1936. In 1945 the students from "native college" at Fort Hare were admitted as members confirming the commitment to non-racialism after a period of indecision.
Early presidents of the organisation included Phillip Tobias elected in 1948, who presided over the organisation's first anti-apartheid campaign. The effort was mounted to resist the racial segregation of South African universities. Ian Robertson, president in 1966, invited Senator Robert Kennedy to address South African Students. Other presidents included, Jonty Driver, Paul Pretorius, Charles Nupen, Neville Curtis, Glenn Moss and Auret van Heerden.
Though the organisation stood for non-violence in its opposition to Apartheid, some former senior members were associated with the first violent anti-apartheid resistance group, the African Resistance Movement.
Despite its liberal resistance to racially separate organisations in the 1960s, its members, and in particular its leadership, supported the breakaway in 1969, of black student leaders, led by Steve Biko and others, to form the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), a Black Consciousness Movement student grouping.
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