Denmark and National Liberation in Southern Africa. A Flexible Response

This book describes and documents the development of Danish support to national liberation in Southern Africa and the two-sided humanitarian and political character of this support. It is based on previously restricted Danish ministry records and on NGO archives and interviews.
The Nordic countries were unique in the Western world in their support to individuals, organisations and refugees, struggling to end institutionalised colonialism and racism and alleviate their humanitarian consequences. Nordic support was humanitarian and civilian, and to a large extent was 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.
Danish support developed differently from that of the other Nordic countries. Official support was never given directly to liberation movements. Rather, Danish NGOs were employed to advise on Danish allocations and to distribute these allocations and carry out activities, using their own capacity or through their international networks. In the field of sanctions, Denmark shifted from a policy of awaiting a UN Security Council decision to imposing unilateral trade sanctions as the first Western country to do so, and the book analyses the political developments behind this.
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 the 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 field 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.
Christopher Munthe Morgenstierne is a historian with a background as a Development Assistance Consultant and activist and Desk Officer in various Danish NGOs as well as in the Nordic office of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). In 1991 he was the Organising Secretary and wrote background information material for the first South Africa conference in Copenhagen after South Africa's first steps towards democracy.