Denmark and National Liberation in Southern Africa

Not long after the 1994 elections in South Africa, the joint Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, with Project Coordinator Tor Sellström as the organiser, took the initiative to establish research in the Nordic countries to document and analyze their involvement in the southern Africa liberation process. The aim was to investigate how the Nordic countries developed a policy of support, and how this took its individual form in each of the countries. The Nordic countries were unique in the Western world in heir support to individuals, organisations and refugees, struggling to end institutional colonialism and racism and alleviate their humanitarian consequences. Nordic support was humanitarian and civilian, and to a large extent given to refugees and to education. Increasingly, it came to involve national liberation movements and financial support to their civilian activities, at a time when these movements were politically and militarily struggling against the regimes in their countries - including the government of Portugal, a NATO military partner of Norway and Denmark. ...The study seeks to determine the events, rationales, arguments and decisions that led to the various forms of Danish support. Key questions are how Danish support was established as a purely humanitarian facility that later developed into supporting also he liberation movements, and how boycott was first considered to be an issue for the individual but eventually became national, official policy. The study seeks to describe why support and sanctions developed in the way and at the pace they did. Major factors involved were Danish public awareness of developments in Southern Africa, domestic political debates and mobilisation through NGOs. This focus on processes of change has been necessary in a filed of Danish foreign relations that during the course of the research was recognised as being a very wide as well as a very interesting one. As a new field of research, and with the majority of the sources never having been studied before, this study has an aim to provide a platform for other researchers, journalists and students. Hopefully it will inspire others to investigate the whole issue further - or to consider it in a different perspective.