Quiet Resistance in the Hills of Värmland

Billy Says:

Tucked in the "wilderness" of Sweden, we stumbled upon a beautiful piece of of the history of anti-apartheid struggle. We first met Andrew,a young father about my age, who had his back broken by Carribinieri in Genova, 2001 and now tries to live out a peaceful life with his partner and kids. Andrew, Malin, Eliann (5) and Lumi (3 mos.) live on Andrew´s mother´s land, in the hilss of southern Värmland, along an 8km lake. It´s a space with no indoor toilet, running or hot water, a well and a wood stove, and the last house to receive electricity from a string of poles running a few kilometres back to town. Andrew´s grandparents bought the land back in the 40s, and though it has mostly been used as a summer home, Andrew and Malin live there year round, and Andrew´s Mother Elsa will soon retire on the land. But the route to this small patch of land (where the sun doesn´t rise above the hills for 10 weeks of the winter) is windy and incredible.

Andrew´s father, Boudewijn Wegerif, was a Dutch man raised in South Africa. He met Elsa on a plane from London in 1964, after spending time helping to bring about the South Africa Defense & Aid Fund in London, roughly the first western anti-apartheid organization (it sprung up in response to Sharpeville). The two decided to get married, and spent seven years together as white, Christan, pacifist dissenters to the apartheid regime. As Elsa says, "Apartheid laws seemed like they were impossible to get around, but if you wanted to - and were willing to be under surveillance by the special branch (many people were watched, but not in trouble) - there were ways around them all... We made no secret of the fact that we weren´t interested in forwarding apartheid." In addition to trying to live out a multi-racial lifestyle, they also participated in some explicit projects against the system, such as helping a group of Swaziland textile producers, inter-racial "sensitivity" gatherings, and the printing and distributing of 1,200 LPs of Martin Luther King´s "Message to the Churches" (which a South African friend had heard in person in the states and recorded).

They felt like they weren´t ever doing enough, despite the surveillance, detention, torture and exiling of their friends (and themselves). Elsa spoke about how, going back to South Africa, she realized how sad she´been. "In those conditions, you have to be strong, you have to give the finger to the wire-taps and stay angry, but you never get time to notice how sad the whole thing is," she said, in describing a new constitutional court and memorial made in the ruins of an old jail for political prisoners.

In 1971, the South African government simply refused to allow them to keep living there. First they went to London, and then in ´84 to Sweden. Starting at four year´s old, Andrew was raised here, and the house was something of a commune, with more than one family living together always, and his mother and father still involved in the radical non-violent dissent that had gotten them kicked out apartheid South Africa. His father was gone for months and even years of his childhood, on long walks to talk about global poverty (Sweden to Rome, Sweden to South Africa [2.5 years of walking] etc.) and jail for civil disobedience (publicly smashing bank windows in defiance of capitalism - he did this three times).

At death, Boudewijn left many papers and books, debt to the banks (which couldn´t be paid because he spent decades "on the goodness of people," and without a legal income) and a chess set. For decades Boudewijn played on a little magnetic chess board, which he carried to the lengths of the earth. Andrew and his brother Marc played a game for it, and Andrew won it. Since his father´s death Andrew takes chess much more seriously (he beat me solidly a good dozen times) and spoke with deep regret about how he was never so good at chess when his father was alive. "I wish I could have given him a good match while he was still alive."

It´s an intense legacy to be born and raised into. Andrew and his family carry on the legacy quite beautifully: emphasizing kindness and love to others and quiet defiance against the current system.

Malin makes the best bread we've tasted on this trip!
(and hey, that´s the WOOF coordinator for Sweden in the background)

Billy and Andrew chat on the shore

Trying to wash Billy's hair without him getting in the lake...

Post-swim picnic on the lawn