ANGRY spymasters considered assassinating a Northwich teacher who became the best known female agent during the final years of the South African apartheid regime, a new television documentary has revealed.
Colonel Vic McPherson, former Security Branch propaganda chief of the apartheid government, told the eNCA Checkpoint TV documentary that
Olivia Forsyth came close to being murdered after her defection to the ANC.
The TV documentary was re-examining the story of Forsyth’s spying activities in the 1980s following the publication of her autobiography “Agent 407”.
Colonel McPherson told the programme that senior members of the security police had “wanted to take her out, to kill her” but by agreeing to participate in a fabricated media campaign attacking the ANC she was left to build a new life.
London-born Forsyth hit the headlines following a dramatic escape to the British embassy in Angola after being held for two years, first in a military prison camp and later a safe house.
The Margaret Thatcher government intervened to get her out of Angola, and she later settled in Britain, teaching at a private school in Cheshire until last year when she and her husband retired to live in Tuscany.
Returning to South Africa to promote her new book rekindled anger amongst former left wing activists whom Forsyth had betrayed.
Forsyth, whose parents were South African, said: “The documentary solved some of the mystery about what happened to me. Vic McPherson confirmed some of my former colleagues were pressing for me to be killed, but he also revealed that there was a high-level source within the ANC who had informed the security police almost immediately of my defection.
“Having realised I was working for the wrong side I tried to do the right thing by offering to work for the ANC as a double agent. I provided them with lots of information over several months.”
In a surprise meeting during the filming of the documentary McPherson told Forsyth that after a section of the ANC decided they couldn’t trust her and placed her in a prison camp in northern Angola, the security police decided she could be left there to rot. But after her escape and British government involvement, he masterminded a propaganda campaign to claim her as a heroine of the apartheid state.
Forsyth added: “It has been a painful process to write the book but I wanted to tell my story and correct some of the half truths and lies from 30 years ago. It is my way of trying to apologise to people I was close to whom I hurt.”
When Forsyth retired from teaching at The Grange School, Northwich, she stunned pupils and colleagues during a memorable morning assembly talk by revealing her past life as a spy.
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