British spy may have revealed Nelson Mandela's hideout

Street vendors sell souvenirs outside the hospital where Mandela has been since June 8. Photo: Getty

British intelligence operatives 'posed as birdwatchers' to spy on Nelson Mandela's ANC hideout before he was arrested, it has been claimed.

Denis Goldberg, a white communist and ANC bomb maker who was detained in the raid on Liliesleaf Farm by South African police on July 11, 1963, said he believed a number of intelligence agencies including the British and Americans were monitoring the farm.

'We believe that there was a British intelligence agent in the nearby caravan park,' he told an audience at a 50th anniversary event to commemorate the raid. 'Everyone thought he was a birdwatcher because he would climb up a telegraph pole with binoculars every day. But I think we were the birds he was watching.'

Mr Mandela and fellow ANC leaders used Liliesleaf, the home of a white sympathiser, to plot their armed rebellion against the apartheid government in the early Sixties. He was arrested in August 1962, charged with sabotage and went on to serve 27 years in prison.

The CIA has long been suspected of providing information that led to Mr Mandela's detention, but the possible involvement of the British security services has rarely been mentioned.

Mr Goldberg's claims are backed by Nicholas Wolpe, the son of another Liliesleaf detainee, Harold Wolpe, who now runs Liliesleaf as a visitor centre and has researched the events leading up to the raid extensively.

But he added that none of those arrested at Liliesleaf thought the British gave them away. 'If the British were monitoring what was happening, which I think they were, they were being very discreet about it,' he said.

The Daily Telegraph

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