The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid, part 1

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Dobson was a white South African who risked her life as an ANC secret agent

Sue was a student when she was first recruited as a spy for the African National Congress liberation movement in the 1980s, and she knew that if she was caught she'd face prison, torture or death. Sue's mission would require her to infiltrate the pro-apartheid media establishment, but first she needed to learn spycraft and weapons handling. Her training would take place in Soviet Russia.

Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Harry Graham Editor: Deiniol Buxton Sound design: Joel Cox

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:06.9	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.1	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:13.7	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history.
0:20.7	We're still looking for Lucan.
0:22.1	It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.
0:25.9	I'm Alex von Tundselman.
0:27.3	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:29.2	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:33.0	I was trained in a variety of firearms.
0:36.7	I was taught how to use the weapon of choice by
0:41.2	liberation movements throughout the world, which is the AK-47. And I was also instructed in
0:48.7	things like hand grenades. When Sue Dobson first fired an AK-47, it was in a snowy field in Soviet Russia,
1:00.3	1986. How did it feel to you handling weapons? It's the strangest feeling. They have a peculiar
1:07.2	beauty, if that's understandable. You can admire the intricacies of them. They have a peculiar beauty, if that's understandable. You can admire the intricacies of them.
1:12.6	They have a peculiar sort of beauty and power.
1:19.6	I suppose that's a mixture of fear and all, really, when you look at them.
1:24.6	And also a sense of horror.
1:30.4	These are weapons of destruction.
1:32.5	These are things that take people's lives.
1:34.9	The huge responsibility of handling a weapon.
	...

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