If this sounds reminiscent of an earlier era, when students led the fight for social change, that's because it is. Modelled on the student & worker organisation of the 1980s, with some changes - everybody is always polite and orderly - Equal Education hopes to rekindle the sense that there is a future worth fighting for.
Zackie Achmat, the founder of the Treatment Action Campaign, which led and won the campaign for anti retroviral treatment for Aids, is the inspiration behind the group and sits on its board. Achmat also enlisted the support of Mary Metcalfe, now the director-general of higher education, and UCT deputy vice-chancellor Crain Soudien, who is also on the board (Metcalfe has resigned since taking up her position in government).
Achmat doesn't play an active role in organising in the schools. H e has recruited two bright-eyed UCT law graduates, Doron Isaacs and Yoliswa Dwane, who share his passion for social change. It was their skills and inspiration that prompted the Khayelitsha pupils to make the move from sitting in classrooms with broken windows to speaking out in a bid to improve their education. With their help, student leaders and activists have quickly begun to emerge.
Phatiswa Shushwana, a feisty and petite grade nine pupil at Luhlazo, is a top student who joined Equal Education at the start of the broken-windows campaign. "My friends were talking about it and since I can see the importance of school, I thought the best thing I could do was to join Equal Education," she says.
"I didn't really think we could get the windows fixed, but afterwards I realised that we do have the ability and the power."
The next campaign Isaacs and Dwane proposed was against "late-coming" at school. In township schools, coming late is so endemic that children have 20% less teaching time than their counterparts in suburban schools.
Says Isaacs: "There was some resistance to the idea, with kids saying why must we come on time?' and school is rubbish', but we said that we want to show that we value education and that as well as challenging the system, we should challenge ourselves," says Isaacs.
So, at 7.30 am twice a week from April to June at 12 schools, members of Equal Education sang and danced at the gates, handing out leaflets and urging their peers to arrive on time. During the three months of the campaign, the number of latecomers dropped from 100-200 a day at each school to almost nothing.
Shushwana says that at Luhlazo, coming late remains a problem but the school's attitude to it has changed. "Now latecomers are locked out and then taken to the hall where they are punished."
Equal Education's latest and biggest campaign - for a library in each school - was launched last month.
In Khayelitsha, the five public libraries are packed out after 2 pm with queues for computers, books and photocopiers.
Matric student Lwando Mzandisi says he spends a lot of time waiting for a computer. His school does not have a library. "After 2 pm the public library is full. If I get into the queue for a computer, I can stand for one or even two hours. I can then use the computer for 40 minutes. And when I look for books, I'll often find that the pages I need have been cut out by somebody, probably because the photocopier wasn't working."
Mzandisi has other problems. At home, there are three children under the age of six, and the noise and activity make it impossible for him to study until everyone is in bed.
Only five of Khayelitsha's 54 schools have functioning libraries, says Isaacs, and the rest of the student population have to rely on the five public libraries.
It's much the same in other townships, both African and coloured, and the Equal Education campaign - which has now spread to Kraaifontein and schools in other parts of Cape Town - calls for "one school, one library, one librarian".
Says Dwane: "We want a functioning library for every school in SA. But a functioning library is not a storeroom or a space in a container. It is a place where young people can come and socialise and learn to love reading."
In the Western Cape, authorities are already sitting up and taking note. This week, acting head of department Brian Schreuder said there were plans to invest R156m over five years in school libraries in the poorest schools.
While that's a start, Equal Education's ambitions are much bigger. Just as public pressure forced a resistant government to introduce treatment for Aids at public hospitals, Equal Education believes public pressure can force another reprioritisation of spending.
