‘An apartheid spy' – Olivia Forsyth’s story

THE house, which became known as the Fruit Basket, was a rambling affair that occupied the first floor over a greasy takeaway joint; on the other side, on the ground floor, was a fruit and veg shop from which the house acquired its name.

I was lucky to have the corner room, with windows on two sides.

Oosie and I quickly adapted our communication system to suit the new accommodation.

As I progressed with infiltration, my contact with Oosie was generally restricted to person-to-person meetings.

Once I had left the relative safety of the bachelor flat on my own in the town centre, telephone contact became risky, as did writing long reports and posting them.

Postage also meant unnecessary delay, so one-to-one meetings were the first choice.

While living with people has the advantage of making a person both available at a moment’s notice and automatically a part of kitchen table conversations – which can be more important than joining any organisation or attending any meeting – for an agent one of the obvious disadvantages is that it makes communicating with your handler much more difficult.

Whereas previously a lot of my free time was my own, now it was not. I did not dare telephone; even a payphone was only to be used in an emergency, as I was by now well known.

I remember, when I was doing my training at head office, Craig Williamson not only driving a snazzy car with a registration something like 007SPY (I think it was a Mercedes Sports) but also having one of those car telephones that necessitated a long aerial protruding from the boot and a large handset between the seats.

With hindsight, they seem like unwieldy bricks, but then they were the cutting edge of technology.

This was a long time before cellphones.

The system Oosie and I adopted for our clandestine meetings was simple. At each one we would arrange the next, with a fall-back plan in case something went wrong. All our meetings were now car pick-ups.

During the day I would have to locate myself at a convenient rendezvous, and the longer I was in Grahamstown, and the better known I became, the more difficult this was. We would choose different pick-up points, depending on where I was living, and what time of day it was.

It was vital that I was not seen wandering around in unlikely places, so the pick-ups could not be out of the way. They did, however, have to be in streets that were quiet enough for there to be no passersby at the critical moment. Oosie’s car was also well known among members of the left.

This was a small town in every way. He would first drive down the length of the pick-up road to sweep it, and then pick me up on the second sweep if all was clear.

I would duck down onto the floor of the passenger side, and he would cover me with a jacket or a blanket and take off, deriving great pleasure from giving me a running commentary on which lefties we were driving past, particularly if we passed any of my close associates.

Once we had reached the outskirts of the town he would let me know when it was safe to sit up, remaining alert as cars and people passing were always unpredictable.

We would drive up the mountain outside town, a favourite beauty spot with nature lovers, other lovers, and now spies, and Oosie would park at a spot where the approach from both sides was visible for some distance.

First I would deliver my report, often with the aid of a dictaphone, covering all organisational activities, meetings and plans, new contacts, developments with old contacts and any other information I had gleaned. Oosie, in turn, would fill me in on any new information that he thought might be useful to me.

There were not many suitable roads between the Fruit Basket and the university, so we mostly used Huntley Street, a quiet road that had houses only on one side.

A green area which included the leafy school grounds of Victoria Girls High School ran along the other side of the road, which was lined on that side with tall trees, making it quiet during the day and fairly dark at night.

From the Fruit Basket, meeting at night was increasingly difficult, so many of our meetings were during the day, when I had some free periods. Timing was everything. Despite Oosie’s sweeps, the pick-ups and drop-offs were always risky, always nerve-wracking.

Although the pick-ups were mostly uneventful, we had our fair share of close shaves.

The worst of these moments occurred one night when I was walking towards the university. I had almost reached the rendezvous. Oosie had already done his sweep and was on his way towards me for the second time, this time to pick me up.

Suddenly, just in the edge of the light cast by one of the street lamps, my eyes picked up a shadowy figure. Silhouetted in the beams of the headlights, I spotted a shape moving in the shadows. There was definitely someone under the trees, walking towards me. I felt sure that Oosie, without the advantage of the light behind, had not seen anything. I kept walking, praying that he would notice the person and speed up, but he was still cruising forward, as he always did. At the moment when it was nearly too late, I recognised the shadow:  it was Roland White, probably the last person I would have wanted inadvertently to come upon me about to have a meeting with my handler.

With no time to think, I stepped out into the beam of the headlights, crossed in front of Oosie’s car, and greeted Roland casually. As we exchanged pleasantries, Oosie drove on by. Roland flicked a glance at the car and then remarked that it was Oosthuizen and advised me to take care.

We walked on in our separate directions. Disaster had been averted.

It took me some time, despite my appearing indifferent, to slow my heart rate down after that. A few seconds could have made all the difference; a few seconds and Roland would have seen me get into that car. My cover would have been well and truly blown. Needless to say, that meeting was aborted.

I went about my business and then returned home, feigning normality. The next few days were tense for me as I waited to see whether Roland had put two and two together. He hadn’t.

At the Fruit Basket, the signal for an urgent meeting was to transfer my tomato-red pot-plant holder from one windowsill to the other.

There were set times for a morning or afternoon meeting, and Oosie would drive past to check the window twice a day. I remember once moving it by mistake when I was cleaning, and having to apologise for getting Oosie into a panic.

What also had to change, after my abode, was my form of transport. I had to part with my beloved Kawasaki. In the gospel according to Oosie, the bike was not a suitable means of transport for someone in the process of infiltrating. What was important was to be useful, to be able to transport people, and to that end Oosie determined that I should have a car.

lAgent 407 – A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence by Olivia Forsyth (Jonathan Ball R230)