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The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for Liberalism
Liberalism

Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophy that considers individualism liberty and equality to be the most important political goals....
 in South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 in the latter part of the last century. Their mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.

This inevitably brought them in conflict with the Apartheid regime, which was arguably their most important political role in the organisation's almost seven-decade history, a feat that eclipsed the life of the racist National Party
National Party (South Africa)

The National Party was the governing party of South Africa from June 4, 1948 until May 9, 1994, and was disbanded in 2005. Its policies included apartheid, the establishment of a republic, and the promotion of Afrikaner culture....
.

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.






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The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was an important force for Liberalism
Liberalism

Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophy that considers individualism liberty and equality to be the most important political goals....
 in South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
 in the latter part of the last century. Their mottos included non-racialism and non-sexism.

This inevitably brought them in conflict with the Apartheid regime, which was arguably their most important political role in the organisation's almost seven-decade history, a feat that eclipsed the life of the racist National Party
National Party (South Africa)

The National Party was the governing party of South Africa from June 4, 1948 until May 9, 1994, and was disbanded in 2005. Its policies included apartheid, the establishment of a republic, and the promotion of Afrikaner culture....
.

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 Roberston, president in 1966, was instrumental in inviting Senator Robert Kennedy to address South African Students . Other presidents included, Jonty Driver, Paul Pretorius and Neville Curtis.

Though the organisation stood for non-violence in their opposition to Apartheid, some former senior members were associated with the first violent anti-apartheid resistance group, the African Resistance Movement.

Despite their liberal resistance to racially separate organisations, its members, and in particular its leadership, supported the breakaway in 1969, of black student leaders, led by Steve Biko
Steve Biko

Stephen Bantu Biko was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population....
 and others, to form the South African Students' Organisation
South African Students' Organisation

The South African Students' Organisation was a body of South African students who resisted apartheid through political action. The organisation was formed in 1968, spearheaded by Steve Biko, and played a major role in the Black Consciousness Movement....
 (SASO), a Black Consciousness Movement
Black Consciousness Movement

The Black Consciousness Movement was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the power vacuum created by the decimation of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership, by jailing and banning, after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.....
 student grouping.

This change left NUSAS somewhat marginalised in the political struggle of the 1970s, which was seen by many as a fight for the freedom of black South Africans. At this time there were many students at the so called "white" universities who supported the organisation because of its anti-apartheid campaigns. Most of the English language universities (Wits, UCT, Rhodes, UND, UNP) remained affiliated to NUSAS, which by the mid 1970s was the strongest body of white resistance to apartheid.

NUSAS having adopted the Freedom Charter
Freedom Charter

The Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress....
, involved its members in non-racial political projects in education, the arts and trade union spheres. This confronted Apartheid on the streets and in both the local and international media, infuriating the Nationalist Party Government who cracked down on the rising student revolt on several fronts, in the mid-1970s. This in turn drew the battle lines, with liberals backing the non-racial, African National Congress
African National Congress

The African National Congress has been South Africa's governing party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in May 1994....
 (ANC) in their campaign against the repression in the country.

By the early 1990s South African students began to see the need to consolidate their efforts to finally rid South Africa of racist controls and to re-focus on education issues. NUSAS was merged with black controlled student movements into a single non-racial progressive student organization, the South African Students Congress, SASCO , in 1991.