Agent 407

A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence

Olivia Forsyth

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781868426669
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Intelligence & Espionage
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"I owe it to many people, and to myself, to set the record straight. There have been many versions of parts of the story in the press over the years, many lies overlaid with truths and truths overlaid with lies. Much of the truth is just a palimpsest, an echo that changes even in the act of repeating it, but this is my story."

In the dying years of apartheid, a most extraordinary story hit the headlines. Agent Olivia Forsyth had escaped from ANC imprisonment in Angola. Upon her return home she was feted as a hero by the government. In a flurry of media appearances and press releases, Forsyth claimed to have infiltrated the ANC and passed on vital information.

Is that what really happened? In the world of espionage, truth is the first victim and nothing is as it seems. Here, for the first time and in her own words, South Africa's most notorious female spy during apartheid lays bare the story of her life.

Olivia Forsyth was also known as agent RS407, codename Lara, lieutenant in the Security Branch of the South Africa Police, ANC comrade Helen Bronson, prisoner Thandeka, alias Christine Smith.

Chapter 1

Unfinished Business

Ministerial residential complex, Cape Town, December 2000

Not for the first time, my life has a strangely fictional quality, as if it doesn’t belong to me. I am leaving South Africa in a few days’ time, to take my children to live in the United Kingdom. And, also not for the first time, my fortuitous birth in the UK is providing me with an escape route.

But before I can leave there is some unfinished business to which I need to attend.

I have made the decision to write my story. There are a myriad reasons for this: my own catharsis, a strong desire for my children to know the real story about their mother, so that my extended family, friends and acquaintances will know the truth after all the subterfuge, the lies, the cover stories, and the fictional covers. Most of all, perhaps, I am going to write it all down to do as my mother always urged her children when we had transgressed – to make an act of contrition.

But if I am going to write my story, there is one person with whom I need to discuss it first, the person to whom I owe my life. His sanction is essential to me, although it is not the primary reason I need to see him. First, I have to tell him the truth about what happened and then I need to ask his forgiveness.

There have been two such people in my life, but one of them was brutally gunned down and murdered. Now there is only one.

Ronnie Kasrils. Comrade Ronnie Kasrils.

When I met him he was chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the African National Congress. Now he is a government minister in the South African cabinet. I did think they could have done more for him than assign him the portfolio of Ministry of Water Affairs, but being the good, obedient soldier he was, I knew he would work wherever he was sent.

I had contacted Ronnie Kasrils through a mutual acquaintance, and he had generously and immediately agreed to see me. I was to come to Cape Town, to his residence, for a meeting at 8pm on an evening in December. I was delighted and relieved. I had not been sure how he would respond. Certainly I would not have blamed him if he had wanted nothing to do with me.

As soon as the car stops at the unobtrusive security gate in a quiet, tree-lined street which is the entrance to the ministerial residential complex, a guard emerges from a red roof-tiled guardhouse and approaches. I have not come alone. My friend Susan and her husband Hugh have driven me here. From the passenger seat, I inform the guard of my appointment and he gives us directions and waves us through. The complex, which resembles a genteel, upmarket gated village, with grand houses dotted discreetly around the sculptured grounds, was purpose built by the apartheid government as the official abode for ministers when parliament was in session in Cape Town. In the new South Africa, it still houses ministers, but mostly now the people who live in them are stalwarts of the anti-apartheid struggle.

We drive slowly towards where we think the house is, winding through the beautifully landscaped gardens, but the next thing we know we are lost. We continue driving aimlessly for a while, somehow hoping we’ll see the right place. Then, suddenly, help appears in the peculiar guise of Kader Asmal, who is sitting on the porch of his house, in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, a fluffy white dog on his lap. It is probably a Maltese poodle but the best description I know for this sort of small creature, known for its excitable yapping, is stoep-kakkertjie1 – and it has no appropriate English equivalent that I can think of. Kader Asmal is a much revered stalwart of the struggle and a founder member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in both Britain and Ireland. He is also now the Minister of Education, having recently, coincidentally, handed the post of Water Affairs to Ronnie Kasrils. It feels strange stopping to ask the great Kader Asmal for directions. He is affable, however, and points Ronnie Kasrils’s house out to us, which is in fact close by. We thank him sheepishly and continue on our mission.

At the house, Susan and Hugh wait in the car while I go inside to find out what time I can ask them to return to fetch me. Susan, one of my dearest friends, who now lives in Cape Town, is one of the few people whom I have told the truth, and she is just as excited as I am about this meeting. Outwardly, at least, her excitement is much more evident.

I climb the few steps to the front door and knock. I am somewhat taken aback when the minister himself comes to the door: I had been expecting a bodyguard. His smile and his greeting are genuinely warm and welcoming. He clasps my hand and kisses me on the cheek as if nothing has happened, making me feel more ashamed than ever. The first strangeness is that I am not sure what to call him. ‘Comrade’ seems the right thing, but also not appropriate now; I feel I no longer have the right to call him ‘comrade’, not after the betrayal, and ‘Ronnie’ feels too familiar. ‘Mr Kasrils’ is too formal for someone I knew so well, and who knew me so well too.

He walks me to an upstairs room in this modern villa, a large open-plan space that looks like his study or a family room. It strikes me that there does not seem to be anyone around at all, although later in the evening I can hear some movement somewhere in the house, and I hear him talking to someone when he goes to fetch us a pot of tea.

We skirt around a few niceties, make a few bits of phatic conversation. When I find the opportunity, though, I plunge in. I try to recount what happened, attempt to explain why I took the decisions I did. He listens patiently. My explanations sound lame to me, mere hollow words after all these years, and pathetic in the context of the struggle as a whole, but my apology is sincere. I am deeply sorry for the embarrassment I must have caused him, after he had taken a personal risk in trusting me and believing in me. I had not been able to live up to his expectations. Sitting here across from this man, I feel small, humble, emotional.

When I am finished, his reaction astounds me. There are no recriminations, only kindness and understanding (although he does admit that I had caused him great embarrassment).

There are some serious matters he does wish to discuss with me, however, he says. The most important is whether I might be able to help trace what had happened to an ANC comrade who had had close connections with my fellow Security Branch police officer Lieutenant Joy Harnden. He needs to repeat the comrade’s name for me, as it is not one with which I am familiar. Iggy Mathebula. The activist’s family are still trying to find out what happened to him, after all these years. Iggy had vanished without trace one night when he had apparently been due to meet up with Harnden. I can only imagine what might have happened to this comrade, but the truth is I do not know. All I can offer now is commiseration. Tragically, the date Iggy and Joy had been due to meet was a long time after I had given Harnden’s name to the ANC.

Then Comrade Ronnie shares with me an account of what happened after the last time he and I had met. It was in Luanda, Angola’s capital city. He and Comrade Chris Hani had devised a plan to swap me for a number of important ANC prisoners held in South African prisons. The preparations for this had gone on for months, and they were hoping they were about to get a result.

He and Chris Hani had flown to Lusaka where they had had a meeting with ANC President Oliver Tambo about a number of important issues. Towards the end of the meeting they mentioned the prisoner exchange. ‘Ah,’ said Oliver Tambo, ‘do you mean the same Olivia Forsyth who is holed up in the British Embassy in Luanda?’

The two of them looked at each other.

‘No,’ they replied, thinking that the old man was finally in his dotage. ‘There must be some mistake. We were with her the other day, at our ANC house in Luanda, making preparations for the exchange.’

‘That may be so,’ said Tambo, ‘but she is now in the British Embassy.’

‘No,’ they protested, ‘she is in our safe house in Luanda.’

‘No, she isn’t,’ insisted Tambo. ‘She is in the British Embassy.’

To say that Comrade Chris and Comrade Ronnie were embarrassed was an understatement. They were humiliated.

Comrade Ronnie tells me how the first part of their journey, as they were driven back to the airport, passed in absolute silence, each man contemplating the enormity of what had happened. And then they looked at each other and started to chuckle, until finally they were both laughing out loud until the tears ran down their cheeks.

At the end of our meeting, I tell Comrade Ronnie that I am leaving for the UK in a few days and also that I am considering writing my story down. However, I do not want to undertake this without his blessing, I tell him. Again he surprises me. He is unwavering in his encouragement.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I think you should write your story. I think you will write a good story.’

1 Literally: small patio-shitter

Chapter 2

The Dark Heart

Luanda, Angola, June 1986

The convoy of Jeeps drives north out of Luanda, first along a tar road. At a glance an outsider might mistake the convoy for one of the many Angolan army patrols that roam the streets and the highways in search of Frelimo bandits. Bristling with AK-47s, they drive too fast for the state of the potholed roads. Someone more observant might notice that, on closer inspection, the camouflage the soldiers are wearing is of a different design to that of the Angolans. The Jeeps are Soviet, of course. This is a change from the usual contingent of ubiquitous East German Ladas that the ANC usually drive around Luanda – tired old ersatz Fiat lookalikes, lucky still to be on the roads. The Jeeps do not look particularly new either: battered, the rust showing through the chipped paint as they bump along.

It is a bright day and I bask in the warm winter sun, trying not to reveal my tense excitement. The sky is almost dark blue, with an intensity that seems reserved only for the heart of Africa. Angola might suffer from a great many ills, but pollution is not one of them. There must be few things finer than a balmy Angolan winter’s day, the oppressive humidity of the long summer just a memory, the sun gently warming but not scorching.

At last all the months of waiti...