Reactions to Apartheid Reactions to Apartheid Relief and Boycott The years 1959-61 saw the emergence in Sweden of expressions of organized solidarity with the oppressed majority in South Africa in the form of a fundraising campaign, a consumer boycott and a national committee to coordinate and strengthen the various initiatives undertaken to raise awareness about apartheid. A number of influential South African politicians started at this time to visit Sweden and exiled students were received by Swedish universities. Following the SFS campaign against the Extension of the University Education Act, in September 1959 the Swedish government raised the issue of black South African students in the UN General Assembly and from 1960 the ruling Social Democratic Party began to pay attention to the situation in South Africa at the traditional Labour Day rallies. The first organized expression of solidarity outside the student movement was the Fund for the Victims of Racial Oppression in South Africa,1 set up by the writer and journalist Per Wastberg together with Gunnar Helander in September 1959. Wdstberg2 had been a Rotary scholar in Rhodesia. Writing a series of articles for Dagens Nyheter, he was asked in mid-1959 to leave the country, subsequently spending some time in South Africa. It was at the time of the Treason Trial. More than any previous Swedish observer, Wdstberg would during his short stay not only contact a number of leading cultural personalities, such as Nadine Gordimer, the future Nobel literature laureate, but the political opposition in general and ANC in particular. The contacts resulted in informative presentations of the Congress and its allies in Dagens Nyheter and other foraj describing both the strength and the precarious situation of the 1 In Swedish, Fondenfdr Rasfdslnyckets Offer i Sydafrika. 2Wistberg was closely involved with the developments in Southern Africa from the late 1950s. With Gunnar Helander, he was among the first members of the Consultative Conunittee on Humanitarian Assistance. In 1963, he was a co-founder later vice president-of the Swedish branch of Amnesty International. Wdistberg was thus involved with the local Amnesty group which in 1965 adopted the Zimbabwean ZANU leader Robert Mugabe as a political prisoner. From the beginning of the 1960s, Wlstberg was also an active member of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF). Between 1976 and 1982, he served as editor-in-chief and cultural editor of Dagens Nyheter. A prominent novelist-a trilogy published in 1968-72 sold one million copies in the Nordic countries he was the president of the Swedish PEN Club from 1967 to 1978 and the president of International PEN between 1979 and 1986 and, again, between 1989 and 1990. In 1997, Wastberg became a member of the Swedish Academy. 3 Per Wistberg: 'Afrika, kom tillbaka till oss!' ('Africa, come back to us') in DagensNyheter, 8 August 1959 and' Mute med Afrikanska Ledare' ('Meeting with African Leaders') in Kudlurkontaki, No 2, 1960. Tor Sellstr6m movement. He also introduced a number of ANC leaders to the Swedish public, such as Albert Luthuli, Duma Nokwe, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Lilian Ngoyi. The articles were expanded in 1960 and included in Wastberg's important book On the Black List Like Tingsten, Wastberg did not find any objectionable Communist influence over ANCland the Communists he met-among them Joe Slovo and Ruth First-were given sympathetic portraits, noting that "many of the admirable people one meets [in South Africa] turn out to be either Christian or Marxists. They are often the only ones who dare to practise as they preach".2 Interviewed in 1996, Wastberg explained that "my view when I returned from Rhodesia and South Africa in 1959 was quite narrow. I wrote a great number of articles simply because I was so upset. At the time [...], my only experience of any Swedish commitment was Herbert Tingsten's book on South Africa [and] I had also read one of Gunnar Helander's books".? Coming home as a committed opponent of apartheid and racial discrimination, he, however, took the initiative of establishing the Fund for the Victims of Racial Oppression, launched through an appeal in Dagens Nyheter on 20 September 1959. The appeal stated that the rights we consider self-evident for all human beings are being violated on a daily basis in South Africa. The African is cut off from political influence, denied the right to strike and his life is curtailed by a whole array of decrees that turn existence into a form of imprisonment. He may not settle where he wishes. He may not visit his friends or travel to his parents at a different locality without a permit. Male African urban residents are on average detained once a year. A continuous, bitter and moving, struggle is, however, being waged against all of this. Many of those, white or black, who strive for equality between the races have been deported, ruined or accused of high treason. [...] We live far away from Africa, but through economic assistance we can still achieve something. [...] Silence descends over South Africa, [O]ur assistance can demonstrate that the conscience of the world is awake to the developments there. By assisting the victims of racial oppression we show them that they do not stand alone in their protests against the superior power.4 Financial assistance was envisaged in the form of legal, social and educational aid. It thus paved the way for future official Swedish humanitarian support in these fields: 1Wistberg: "In actual fact, the African National Congress is as anti-Communist as one can expect" (Dagens Nyheter, 8 August 1959). 2 Per Wistberg: PAi Svarta Listan ('On the Black List'), p. 76. 3 Interview with PerWistberg, Stockholm, 28 February 1996. 4 Dagens Nyheter, 20 September 1959. Some questioned an action exclusively centred on South Africa. Victor Vinde, chief editor of the social democratic Stockholms-Tidnmngen, commented: "Those who are horrified by racial oppression in South Africa should feel the same strong indignation when they get reports about torture in Algeria and the police reign in Nyasaland. [...]. [T]he action regarding the South African question should only be seen as a beginning. No racial oppression may leave us indifferent" (Stockholms-Tidningen, 29 September 1959). Reactions to Apartheid We can arrange legal aid to those who have been exposed to legalized racial persecution and assist in bringing the political mass trials in South Africa before the eyes of the civilized world. We can give social aid to families where the children have been left alone because the parents have been imprisoned or banished to another place. [And] we can help young people who have not had the same opportunities as the whites to receive Western education to take correspondence courses at foreign schools or [we can] deposit the amount [of money] needed to get [them] a passport to go abroad.1 The original appeal was signed by fifteen leading Swedish political and cultural personalities. Among them were the chairman of the Liberal Party, professor Bertil Ohlin, the former Social Democratic Minister of Finance, Ernst Wigforss, and the chief editors Ivar Harrie, Herbert Tingsten and Victor Vinde, the latter at the social democratic Stockholms-Tidningen. The academic world was represented by the vice-chancellor of Uppsala university, professor Torgny Segerstedt, the church by bishop Gert Borgenstierna, Gunnar Helander and Ake Zetterberg,2 while the prominent writers Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson3 together with Wastberg represented the field of letters. 4 To the extent that the signatories were active in party politics, they were from the Liberal and Social Democratic parties. Wdstberg later recalled that we were extremely energetic in trying to have signatures of leading Swedes from all over the political spectrum, I regret to say that the only person that could be regarded as conservative [...] was the bishop of Karlstad, Gert Borgenstierna. Otherwise, all the conservative politicians and all the people from the business sector refused to sign. [...] As opinion makers we were all the time suffering from the fact that the conservatives were so reluctant to take sides. I think that they thought that the struggle-especially after Sharpeville-was led by too many lefties.5 The Fund for the Victims of Racial Oppression was inspired by the British Defence and Aid Fund, which had its roots in an appeal made in 1953 by John Collins, chairman of Christian Action, to help the South Africans convicted for participating in the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Canon Collins and Christian Action also provided legal aid for the accused in the 1956 Treason Trial, setting up the Treason Trial Defence Fund, which in 1959 became the British Defence and Aid Fund. After the formation of various national committees and extending the operations into South West Africa and Rhodesia, the International 1 Dagens Nyheker, 20 September 1959. 2 Zetterberg, a Social Democratic MP, was a leading member of the Brotherhood Movement. 3 Johnson and Martinson were members of the Swedish Academy. They shared the Nobel Prize for literature in 1974. 4 The remaining signatories were Reverend Eric Grbnlund, Mrs. Signe Hjer and the editor Arvid SvArd. 5 Interview with Per WAstberg, Stockholm, 28 February 1996. Allan Hernelius, chief editor of the conservative daily Svenska Dagbladet, was the only representative of a major Swedish newspaper refusing to sign the appeal (conversation with Per WAstberg, Stockholm, 28 February 1996). Tor Sellstrbm Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF) was formed in June 1964.1 WAstberg visited Canon Collins in London in the autumn of 1960. It marked the beginning of a close personal relationship between Wastberg and Collins2 and a lasting political understanding between Sweden and IDAF.3 The Swedish chapter was in the beginning coordinated by a small secretariat, with Eyvind Johnson as chairman, Gunnar Helander as vice chairman and Per WAstberg as secretary.