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

Bertil Högberg: Via which church?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: The Anglican church. But I was one of those in South
Africa who pushed for Mozambique and with me there was a gentleman by
the name of Alf Helgesson. We got on well together and he lived about two
blocks away from us in Johannesburg, so we met frequently.
Bertil Högberg: He was a Methodist missionary?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes. He did lots of fine work. He taught at Rakatla, the
theological institution just outside then Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.
Bertil Högberg: Yes, when he was readmitted in the 1980s.
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: 1984, I think it was.
Bertil Högberg: Was any particular work done together with the <strong>Nordic</strong>
mission organizations, anyone that you worked more closely than the others?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: Yes there would be an annual meeting between the donor
agencies and the Church with its various offshoots, the Norwegian Mission
Society, the Berlin Mission Society, Hermannsburg, CSM, and the American
Lutheran Mission, these five. They would meet annually for two or three days
perhaps, somewhere in the world. Often they met here in Uppsala, which was
central somehow or other, but if they necessarily wanted to meet in South
Africa, they would apply for visas, against their hopes they would get visas,
otherwise they would meet in Swaziland, or perhaps Lesotho.
Bertil Högberg: Denmark didn’t have any tradition of having mission work in
South Africa or Southern Africa?
<strong>Axel</strong>-<strong>Ivar</strong> <strong>Berglund</strong>: No.
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