The South African Students' Movement (SASM) was an anti-apartheid political organisation of South African school students, best known for its role in the

1976 Soweto uprising The Soweto uprising, also known as the Soweto riots, was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa during apartheid that began on the morning of 16 June 1976. Students from various schools began to p ...

. By 1976 it was strongly identified with the

Black Consciousness Movement The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Af ...

. It was banned by the apartheid government in October 1977 as part of the repressive state response to the uprising. SASM was founded in 1972 in the

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name ''Transvaal''. * South African Republic (1856–1902; ...

and was most active in

Soweto Soweto () is a Township (South Africa), township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western T ...

high schools. According to academic Nozipho Diseko, its precursor was the African Students Movement (ASM), a forum founded in Soweto in 1968. On Diseko's account, ASM's leaders, in consultation with leaders of the Black Consciousness South African Students' Organisation (SASO), decided in 1972 to rename and expand ASM and subsequently launched several broad campaigns against the Bantu Education system.

References

{{Reflist Defunct student organisations in South Africa Anti-apartheid organisations Black Consciousness Movement