Lord Cornelius,
Olof Palme belonged to a long tradition of Swedish internationalism that began with the great Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and his wife Alva Myrdal, both of them Nobel laureates. We cannot forget the immortal Dag Hammarskjold, a highly learned economist, intellectual and mystic, who became UN Secretary-General. I recall memorable six months spent in Uppsala as a graduate student under the wings of Bishop Bengt Sundklar, missionary, theologian and Africanist. The Swedes have done very well for a middle ranking northern European country. Even at a time when it was not quite popular, they were unequivocally against Apartheid; remaining stalwart anti-colonialist defenders of African liberation. Lars Rudebeck was a friend of Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel and Agostinho Neto in the Portuguese speaking territories. Olof Palme hailed from that rich tradition of progressive internationalism. Later there were younger academics such as Bjorn Beckmann and his wife Gunilla Andrae who taught some of us as students at ABU Zaria.
I have deep affection for the Swedish people and their culture. From my little flat near the Linnaeus Gardens in Uppsala I used to walk on foot to the great university library, Carolina Redeviva. We lit candles in the great Cathedral to remember Dag Hammarskjold, who remains for me a model of intellectual culture and international service. Hammarskjold was the most brilliant student of his generation, with degrees in Literature, Law, Economics and Political Science. He was fluent in English, French, Spanish and German, in addition to his native Swedish. A friend of philosophers such as Martin Buber and poets such as W. H. Auden, he was a man extraordinary brilliance and mindfulness who put his talents at the service of humanity. Floreat Sverige!
On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
--Olof Palme was very popular in Africa and the rest of the third world. To what extent our world could or would have been different if he had not been brutally assassinated some thirty years ago is for a competent political scientsist to assess or speculateThis is something else:
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