Gangster State

(and which now appears on his own website), he ‘became a founder
member of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) in
1979 ’.^6 His alleged involvement in COSAS also surfaced in his
interview for the ANC Oral History Project: ‘I was part of COSAS
during its early stages when it was formed,’ he is recorded as saying.
But Papi Kganare, a struggle stalwart, former trade unionist and one
of COSAS’s co-founders, says Magashule played no role in the
formation of the organisation. ‘I am one of the founding members of
COSAS with the likes of Oupa Masuku and so on. Ace was not a
founding member,’ he told me.
An article that appeared in 2015 in the Free State community
newspaper Express supports this. Penned by COSAS’s first
chairperson in the province, it lists the organisation’s top Free State
leadership during the struggle years. Magashule is not among them.^7
Magashule’s online biography goes on to claim that he also
‘participated in the founding of the United Democratic Front [UDF] in
the 1980 ’s’. His interview for the ANC Oral History Project includes
further details in this regard: ‘[W]e established the UDF in the Free
State in 1984. The UDF was established in ’ 83. In Free State we were
responsible ... Comrades like comrade Popo [Molefe], Aubrey
Mokoena, Terror [Lekota] was there also, Trevor Manuel. In the Free
State we had Dennis Bloem and the others. So we were the pioneers of
the UDF in the Free State.’ Yet almost all of those UDF pioneers cited
by Magashule openly denied that he was involved in setting up the
organisation.
Dennis Bloem, a former ANC member who later joined Kganare in
the opposition Congress of the People (COPE), said there was no way
that Magashule helped to establish the UDF. ‘I was a founding member