Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa: Solidarity and assistance, 1970-1994

This book is the second in a two volume study on Sweden and the struggle for national liberation in Southern Africa. Largely drawing from hitherto restricted sources at official and NGO archives, the study focuses on Sweden’s relations with MPLA of Angola, FRELIMO of Mozambique, SWAPO of Namibia, ZANU and ZAPU of Zimbabwe and ANC of South Africa. The first volume (Formation of a Popular Opinion (1950 - 1970)-- which appeared in 1999--- addressed the question why Sweden established close relations with nationalist movements that elsewhere in the West were shunned as ‘Communist’ or ‘terrorist’. The second volume discusses how the Swedish political, diplomatic and material support to these movements was expressed during the period from 1970 to 1994, i.e. until the first democratic elections in South Africa and the end of the region’s Thirty Years’ War for majority rule. The scope and orientation of the official humanitarian assistance to the very liberation movements that eventually assumed state power in their respective Southern African countries are documented and analyzed. The book thus presents a unique and little known North-South relationship in the Cold War period.