Axel-Ivar Berglund - Nordic Documentation on the Liberation ...

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Bertil Högberg: You continued to work as Secretary for Asia for how long? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Until 1995. Then I was more or less forced to retire, at least salary-wise. Bertil Högberg: So when you left South Africa, did you have a passport then? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes, and I still have it. I won’t have a Swedish one, although I honour it very much indeed. I’m not trying to say that I’m not a Swede, I am by virtue of my parents being Swedes and Kerstin and so forth. But after I left, I visited South Africa many times and normally came into the country through Gaborone. You know all those cattle gates where the cattle from Botswana that were to be sold for slaughter purposes, there were certain weekdays when those cattle gates were open and I had a list of cattle gates. What I did was to hire a car in Gaborone and travel to a gate so that I would arrive at the gate five minutes before it closed. I spoke Afrikaans and wore a khaki shirt, khaki trousers and that’s all. I will have said something like, “Hi, lucky for me that you are still here!” and the implication was that they should just stamp my passport and then I was in. It was a different matter to get out, but that is a different story. Bertil Högberg: Your South African passport was never withdrawn? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: I have it here. Bertil Högberg: So you could travel on that. <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: I could travel. I wasn’t welcome all over the place, least of all in Tanzania, which Bengt Sundkler said I should visit, but I had a South African passport. When coming to Germany, they really looked at me, “What do you want here?” But I coped, I managed and I am proud that I managed and didn’t fall for the offer to become a Swedish citizen in terms of getting a passport. That I could have had within two minutes, five perhaps. 22
Bertil Högberg: You also served for some years as a professor here at the university? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes. Bertil Högberg: But that was a temporary thing? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: That was temporary yes. Carl Fredrik Hallencreutz had been invited by the University of Harare to set up the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and he was to be away for a year and a half. I was then docent (associate professor) here in Uppsala and so I acted as professor in his place. Bertil Högberg: If we turn to your academic career, you wrote a dissertation in South Africa, didn’t you? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes I started it here for Bengt Sundkler, but Bengt Sundkler wasn’t a great letter writer and I got nowhere with it, so I changed to Monica Wilson, an outstanding scholar at the University of Cape Town. I wrote a thesis on Zulu thought patterns and symbolism. Unfortunately I have only a single copy left, it’s been printed twice and now a third edition is being planned. Bertil Högberg: If you go back to the time when you worked at the CSM office here, your region was Southern Africa. How was that defined in CSM, which countries did it involve? <strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: It involved virtually all because we channelled money to Namibia and I had been to see the folk in Namibia in attempts to raise theological education standards. Bishop Auala invited me time and again and so I would fly to Windhoek and stay at the theological seminary. There was a German missionary by the name of Theo Sundermaier who later on became professor in Heidelberg in Germany and Raua Woupio from Finland. I got to 23
Page 1 and 2: Axel-Ivar<
Page 3 and 4: How would that be possible? Be that
Page 5 and 6: with South Africa is that in the mi
Page 7 and 8: against apartheid, because other pe
Page 9 and 10: old resolution or something of that
Page 13 and 14: the crushing of the expectations of
Page 17 and 18: second lot were our family, the peo
Page 19 and 20: on me. We went out and sat in Joube
Page 21: even Archbishop Olof Sundby, who wa
Page 25 and 26: Bertil Högberg: Did you receive an
Page 31 and 32: LWF, the Lutheran World Federation,
Page 33 and 34: Bertil Högberg: But were there any

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