Former head, Western Cape Anti-Gang Unit and Presidential Investigation Task Unit (deceased); named in evidence as Fadiel Adams's source · Cape Town
Deceased · named in evidence
The retired general whose word set the Crime Intelligence prosecution in motion, and who died before anyone could ask him about it. Andre Lincoln was an uMkhonto weSizwe intelligence officer, a bodyguard to Nelson Mandela, and the head of the Presidential Investigation Task Unit that Mandela established in the 1990s; from 2018 he commanded the Western Cape Anti-Gang Unit, and he was also involved in the investigation that followed the 2020 assassination of detective Charl Kinnear. He had been out of the police service for about three years when, in late 2024, he became - on Fadiel Adams's account - the source of roughly 90 percent of the allegations Adams took to the police minister and then to the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption. Adams told the Madlanga Commission on 20 August 2026 (Day 163) that Lincoln told him his Cape Town dockets had been intercepted, advised him to lay the same charges in another province, gave him the contact for the man who admitted him to Orlando SAPS in Soweto, gave him a telephone number for IDAC, and later advised him not to meet the SAPS inspectorate investigator who was trying to interview him. Adams named none of this to the minister, the Inspector-General of Intelligence or IDAC at the time; he gave Lincoln's name for the first time to Parliament's ad hoc committee, after Lincoln's death, saying: 'I wouldn't have mentioned him if he was alive.' Lincoln died on 30 May 2025, aged 63, after a long illness, and was widely mourned. He has answered none of this and cannot. When the commission put to Adams that Lincoln was either mistaken, misinforming him, or had never said it at all, Adams chose the first: 'I'm going to grudgingly accept that my friend may have been wrong.' Nothing here is a finding against Lincoln, whose reputation rests on a long public record and who is not in a position to answer an untested account of private conversations.
Andre LincolnAnti-Gang UnitPresidential Investigation Task UnitFadiel AdamsCrime IntelligenceMadlanga Commission
This profile summarises testimony and evidence given on the public record before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry. It restates allegations as presented at the hearings and is not a finding of guilt, liability, or wrongdoing by any person.
Awaiting appearanceNo portrait on the public record yet
Their role
What the record says
Named as the source of about 90 percent of the Crime Intelligence allegations
Asked on Day 163 where he had obtained the claims about Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo's vetting and security clearance and about General Fannie Masemola's role in the appointment, Fadiel Adams answered: 'I would tell you on this issue 90 percent of what I got I got from General Andre Lincoln.' He described Lincoln as 'a walking encyclopaedia' on the SAPS and the underworld and said that was why he acted on his word without checking it. Lincoln was retired at the time and had no involvement in any of the investigations concerned. Untested; he cannot answer it.
The claim that dockets had been intercepted, which the record did not support
Adams's evidence is that Lincoln told him his Cape Town dockets had been intercepted, and later, on 31 October or 1 November 2024, that 'these buggers just won't stop, they're about to do it again' in Gauteng. The commission established that the Gauteng dockets had not been interfered with, and that the Cape Town dockets were called to Pretoria only because Adams's own complaint to the police minister generated a service-complaint investigation. Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga put three possibilities to Adams - that Lincoln was mistaken, that he was misinforming him, or that he had never said it - and Adams accepted the first. No finding has been made about what Lincoln did or did not say.
Said to have supplied the Orlando contact and the IDAC number
On Adams's account, Lincoln advised him not to lay the charges again in Cape Town but in another province, and sent him the WhatsApp contact of a man Adams knew only as 'Elvis', who met him at Orlando SAPS in Soweto and referred him to a detective. The commission identified that man in evidence as Witness G, the Crime Intelligence official described as Brown Mogotsi's handler. Adams also said Lincoln introduced him to Mogotsi on a phone call at Lincoln's house, and later gave him a telephone number for IDAC that did not work. Untested; all named are presumed innocent.
Said to have advised Adams not to meet the inspectorate investigator
The SAPS inspectorate's Colonel Phillips made four documented attempts in November 2024 to interview Adams about his own complaint. Adams told the commission he brushed him off, and that the advice came from Lincoln: 'don't meet with this guy.' Adams accepted on Day 163 that there was nothing sinister in the inspectorate's interest and that he had 'muddied the water'. Untested.
A long and contested public career
Lincoln led the Presidential Investigation Task Unit under Nelson Mandela and is credited with having thwarted an assassination attempt on the president. He was himself prosecuted in a case that collapsed and that he spent years challenging. He was appointed to head the Western Cape Anti-Gang Unit in 2018 and was later drawn into the aftermath of the 2020 murder of detective Charl Kinnear. He died on 30 May 2025 at 63 after a long illness; theologian Allan Boesak said publicly that he 'died heartbroken in a South Africa that isn't what he fought for'.