Man Alone by Caryn Dolley — The life of Mandela’s top cop, and South Africa’s ceaseless sabotage

‘There’d be shootouts, the bullets would fly between us.” He’s detailing how, decades ago, he and another intelligence agent tracked Colombian traffickers in Eswatini. That was around the time apartheid operatives – and potentially some of those fighting them – fuelled drug trafficking in South Africa.

Earlier, he told me how some of his so-called comrades have turned out to be traitors. Suddenly he sits upright, stretches out both arms horizontally, and inhales deeply as if preparing to make a grand announcement. He exhales, his words and breath exiting his body at the same time: “These are my recollections and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

I know André Lincoln knows secrets. State secrets. I also know he’s expressly trained not to divulge these secrets and that he has not trusted me in the past because I am the very type of person he would rather have nothing to do with – a journalist. So, this, his detailing of clandestine work and stating upfront his view that some of those still in power in South Africa are cowards, if not common criminals, suggests he’s relenting. A little, at least.

Lincoln has told me a few things recently. About Nelson Mandela (South Africa’s first post-apartheid president had an exceptionally soft side and enjoyed watching cartoons some mornings), high-profile acquaintances who turned out to be greedy lowlifes, and his bitter frustration at how democratic South Africa has been run. 

As he’s got to know me, and each time his health has taken a knock – and there have been several times, with him undergoing a double leg amputation in 2021 as a result of diabetes-related gangrene, ahead of more extreme surgery – he’s opened up a little more. 

https://youtu.be/K0KUeAWtuVY

As a journalist I’ve been in intermittent contact with Lincoln over the years, either requesting comment for news articles or following court matters and issues linked to him. He’s rarely budged and given the comment. And when he has, it’s been short, sharp and to the point. 

For years I’ve asked him and his legal representative of many more years about when he planned to write a book, since other police officers have become authors and especially because he has an astounding story to tell. The reply has often been a kind laugh, a joke or a glib suggestion – to shake me off from asking, I think – that I should do it.

That was until Lincoln’s health took a serious dip. I still gently pressed him about writing a book; and then one day, in 2023, I said I was seriously going to write something about incidents linked to him. 

I didn’t realise it, but that “something” had lain dormant in my mind for a very long time, slowly growing with me as my understanding of situations developed. 

I’d inadvertently spent years as a journalist following Lincoln’s career – I’d written about gangsterism when he headed police projects to counter it, I’d sat on court benches for hours listening to proceedings that hinged on him and his work, and my bedtime reading often included poring over legal documents relating to accusations he faced. 

I found it unbelievable that, as a reporter, I had sat in court matters linked to events that some of my senior colleagues had started covering so many years earlier. I also found it unsettling that when Lincoln testified in the Western Cape High Court in 2017, a bigger fuss wasn’t made about his assertions that certain crimes were covered up under apartheid, issues that are now gaining more traction. 

Lincoln’s reaction to me stating I was going to write something was to kindly say he has nothing to hide, and that I should write as if nothing is holding me back. I had questions, though. He had answers. DM