Anti-apartheid student ephemera issued by the National Union of South African Students c.1987
This publication is a landmark piece of late-1980s anti-apartheid student ephemera issued by the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) Projects Committee.
The 1987 "Academic State of Emergency": The inner spread specifically targets Minister of National Education F.W. de Klerk’s August 1987 attempt to tie state university subsidies directly to police action on campuses. The apartheid government demanded that university administration council members active enforcement of law and order—effectively forcing liberal English-language "open" universities like Wits, UCT, Rhodes, and Natal to police anti-apartheid student activists or face financial ruin.
Bridge Between NUSAS and Black Student Movements: Pages 2 and 3 cite the broader "People's Education for People's Power" framework established by the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) in late 1985. It directly reflects the strategic convergence during the late 1980s state of emergency where predominantly white, liberal student unions like NUSAS actively aligned their campaigns with banned or heavily suppressed township-based organizations such as COSAS (Congress of South African Students) and AZASO/SANSCO.
Underground/Alternative Media Aesthetics: The cover art showcases the classic aesthetic of anti-apartheid student resistance publishing: hand-drawn illustrations combined with high-contrast, paste-up collage and hand-lettering designed to be rapidly reproduced via offset press or duplicators. The split graphic—contrasting white institutional architecture with black student struggle—captures the central argument of the text: that state-funded education under apartheid was structured around systemic inequality and political control.
The Legacy of Bantu Education Resistance: The inner pages trace the lineage of educational resistance directly from the 1954 opposition to the Bantu Education Act and the 1976 Soweto Uprising to the mid-1980s school boycotts, framed around H.F. Verwoerd’s original doctrine of enforced educational inferiority.
212mm x 300mm
8 loose pages. Some minor wear.
R1,250
