Speaker, on 7 September 2013 the great revolutionary student movement, the South African Students' Congress, Sasco, celebrated its 22nd anniversary at North West University's Potchefstroom Campus. The South African Students' Congress was launched on 6 September 1991 at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape when the two student organisations, Sasco and the National Union of South African Students, Nusas, combined to form one powerful student organisation.
The birth of the South African Students' Congress was not easy as the two organisations were coming from different backgrounds, with Sasco predominantly black and Nusas a white student organisation. About 600 delegates from the hinterlands of South Africa gathered to work towards this vision of a future where black and white people lived in harmony and worked together to put into being a national democratic society through a national democratic revolution.
This single nonracial progressive student organisation in higher institutions of learning became a force to be reckoned with in representing the student needs. It is so unfortunate that some of these visionary leaders, like Bathandwa Ndondo, Claude Qavane and others, are no more. The ANC is proud that Sasco continues to enjoy majority hegemony in many institutions of higher learning and further education and training colleges. We are confident that this is a precursor to the ANC's decisive and overwhelming victory in the 2014 general elections. I thank you. [Applause.]