AGENT 407, better known as Olivia Forsyth, has told about her astonishing life as an apartheid spy in a book that was launched at the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday.
“This is my chance to tell the story… why should I not be heard?,” she asked those attending the launch.
She believed that she must have made an impression as a spy because, 30 years later, people still remembered what she had done and that was perhaps the deciding factor of why she was telling her story.
“After I finished studying, I wanted a job that would give me the opportunity to travel. Thus, I applied for a job at the then department of foreign affairs.”
Soon afterwards someone approached her and gave her “a piece of paper with a name and phone number”.
“After phoning that number, my life changed. I was deployed to Rhodes University where I was spying for the national forces.”
She denied that people were killed because of information she had passed on to the police. However, she admitted that she had not known what the information was used for.
“Police didn’t care about student meetings. They merely wanted to know why students were joining the ANC and the SACP.”
Forsyth said she went to Zimbabwe with the intention of joining the ANC to become a double agent for the liberation movement. “After working for the enemy, I thought I could make a significant contribution to the Struggle, which is why I wanted to join the ANC. It never made any sense why the ANC rejected my plan.”
When asked why she had not sought amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she said had lost her daughter during that period, and could not “think of anything else”.
Forsyth now lives in Italy with her British husband.
Cape Argus