Formally, SACHES was established in 1991 at the annual conference of the Kenton Education Association 

(KEA), a general education society with which it has retained close links, and even overlapping memberships. The organization, guided by its founders Harold Herman, Peter Kallaway, David Gilmour and Crain Soudien, came into being as both a comparative and history of education society. Its founders felt the need for a society that would devote itself to the issues of comparison and history because, critically, especially with respect to the former, none of the existing societies in the region paid particular attention to the issues of CE. KEA, the leading English-speaking education association, focused its work on curriculum and sociology of education. 

The Afrikaner education society, the Education Association of South Africa (EASA), on the other hand, regularly included CE in its sessions, but it did not enjoy the kind of credibility that would have easily encouraged liberal and radical scholars of CE to seek refuge within it. The Southern African Society of Education (SASE), which served academics working within historically-black universities and colleges, the third major general education society, also did not have a significant CE interest. While none of these three organizations, to be fair, was, at the time of the formation of SACHES, racially exclusive, they tended to operate with, respectively, a predominant, English-speaking white, an Afrikaans-speaking white and a black membership. 

Against this backdrop SACHES emerged as a society that sought not only to focus on CE but simultaneously to emphasize an inclusive racial and geographic agenda. Unlike the other societies, with the exception of SASE which had members in the wider region, it specifically sought to establish itself as a regional organization with the objective of building a membership in the immediate region, i.e., in countries such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Uganda and Lesotho, but also to attract participation from Kenya and Tanzania. In the context of a traditional South African reserve towards the idea of being African, it deliberately projected itself as an African association. Given the historic divide between South Africa and the rest of the country, this is an enormously important point to recognize.

10th Congress of WCCES 

The highlight of SACHES' history was winning the bid to host the 10th Congress of the WCCES. This meeting took place in Cape Town in 1998 under the leadership of the Western Cape Executive, chaired by Kallaway who became president after Herman had served two (two-year) terms and co-ordinated by Crain Soudien. The congress was a great success and continues to be remembered for the quality of its organization and the level of scholarship it generated. Officially, in excess of 800 delegates from 60 countries attended the meeting, and, critically, the African continent was well represented with scholars who came from its furthest reaches, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and so on. 

Kallaway with the assistance of the organization's executive, inter alia Herman and Soudien managed to secure the support of funders such as the Royal Netherlands government, the British Council and the Association of Development for Education in Africa (ADEA) who assisted in bringing not only delegates from the continent but also important education ministers, permanent-secretaries and high level officials. The mix of scholars and policy-makers who were present gave the meeting a sense of urgency and gravitas. Important initiatives came out of the meeting, not least of all the establishment of a fund for the support of comparative education scholarship in the region. Membership of the organization, after this event, stood at approximately 100 paid-up scholars from across the region. 

After the excitement of 1998, predictably, the organization went into a period of stasis. Sheldon Weeks became the President at the Bi-Annual General Meeting in Cape Town with Professor S Sabatane from Lesotho as his deputy. The leadership of the organization moved to the north and was distributed between the Universities of Botswana, Pretoria, South Africa and Witwatersrand. At its 2002 Bi-Annual Meeting Brigitte Smit, from the University of Pretoria, became the President and she served for one term before being replaced by Professor Thobeka Mda who was elected at the corresponding meeting in Tanzania in 2005.

Previous Presidents

Prof Herald Herman

Prof Peter Kallaway

Prof Sheldon Weeks

Prof Brigitte Smit

Prof Thobeka Mda

Prof Charl Wolhuter

Dr Dennis Banda

Prof Juliana Smith