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The Swedish Press on the South African Connection<insert name=__subtitle> The Swedish Press on the South African Connection (the s.c.nordic FAQ) The Swedish Press on the South African Connection About : culture, history, places of interest and other things. This page is a part of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file for the newsgroup soc.culture.nordic. Its purpose is to provide some general information about the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland), to cover some of the topics frequently discussed in the group and to introduce new readers to the group. 1 1 1 1 1 1 > > >

The Swedish Press on the South African Connection

Swedish press comment on the allegations apartheid South Africa was behind the murder of Olof Palme

September 30, 1996

by Nidia Hagström and Sarah Roxström

Swedish editorial writers discuss the allegations made by former South African security agent Dirk Coetzee, implicating the apartheid regime in the l986 murder of former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

The morning liberal daily Uppsala Nya Tidning points out that Palme's murder and the failure to find his killer amount to a national trauma, adding that the information now coming from South Africa is truly sensational. This may well turn out to be yet another dead end in the hunt for the murderer, but Coetzee's statements deserve a thorough investigation.

The Conservative newspaper Smålandsposten agrees. This theory is no less likely than many others which have floated around since the shooting, even if it seems far-fetched to believe that former prime minister Olof Palme's support for the ANC and active involvement in the struggle against apartheid are the motive for the assassination, says the newspaper.

Center party daily Länstidning i Södertälje wonders why the South African connection has not been as carefully checked as the one attributing the murder to the Kurdish Labor party once upon a time. And this newspaper suggests that a future investigation should be carried out by a completely different team of detectives. This way one could avoid the risk of prestige getting in the way of a thorough job. Another center-party newspaper, Skånska Dagbladet, follows the same line of reasoning, renewing a suggestion once made by one of Palme's sons: that foreign investigators, possibly from another Nordic country, be assigned to the task.

Liberal daily Vestmanlands läns tidning rounds off by warning against a potential pitfall: the fact that a South African connection would be such an "attractive" solution to a muder that shook the whole Swedish nation. It would mean that some shady figure working for Pretoria's racist regime would have killed Palme because of Sweden's support for South Africa's oppressed black population. This would be a lot more comforting than the alternative of a single, confused Swede who just happened to shoot his own prime minister.