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

know the people quite well.
As far as the Republic of South Africa is concerned, at the time there were
great efforts put into uniting the mission areas into one church. The snag was
to involve the white Lutherans in South Africa who were difficult to handle.
Eventually a united church came about without the whites. Still today they are
outside. It was difficult to say that it was only in KwaZulu-Natal. Transvaal was
very much on the scene, so was the Cape. CSM eventually sent missionaries
to the Cape and to Swaziland that, by the way, was included.
Bertil Högberg: Was Zimbabwe also part of what you worked with?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes, but that was a different area. The church in
Zimbabwe was different. ELCZ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Zimbabwe, had their first indigenous bishop, Jonas Shiri, and I worked a great
deal with him.
Bertil Högberg: When you were at CSM, was that when a struggle was still
going on in Namibia in the 1980s?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Oh, yes.
Bertil Högberg: The traditional support for the Lutheran Churches there, used
to come from Germany and Finland, but were you also were involved in
supporting them?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes.
Bertil Högberg: Did you support anything else beside theological education?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Oh, yes. All these technical widows, because their men
sat on Robben Island, had to live and nobody would employ them. So
considerable sums of money went to these persecuted people.
24