MAN ALONE

Author: Caryn Dolley

Publisher: Daily Maverick

Reviewer: Orielle Berry

Caryn Dolley may be young in years but in her star-studded career she has trod quite a few paths that many have feared to tread: bravely and meticulously lifting the lid on some of the country’s dirtiest deals at top crime level and exposing some of the key kingpins. It’s a dedicated calling and a job definitely not to be taken lightly which has often, to put it mildly, compromised her personal safety.

Woman Zone had the privilege of hosting Caryn a while back and at her fascinating talk, in the form of a question and answer session, WZ’s Theresa Smith, quizzed on her fourth and latest book – Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage.

An award-winning journalist Caryn’s non-fiction books focus on the many thorny issues of the day, including the state of corruption. She has spent over a decade meticulously lifting the lid on the all too often sordid tale of the country’s gang networks. Earlier this year Caryn won an award for her comprehensive series on international drug kingpins and their links to South Africa, including the politics that surround many of the sorry sagas.

Recognised for her painstaking research into such organised crime, in 2022 Caryn was commended for her probe into transnational drug trafficking and firearms issues and she’s also received a national sustainability award in South Africa for her reports on what has evolved into a new crime crisis: the theft and smuggling of endangered plants.

Participants sat riveted around the table as Caryn related details of the book and how she set about writing it.

The book lays bare the story of Andre Lincoln, the man who was regarded as Mandela’s top cop. Lincoln was deeply implanted in apartheid-era sabotage across local and global criminal investigations; for a period that spanned decades.

Other equally nefarious players, such as an informant once close to Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, to suspected Cape Town crime kingpins added to the already sorry story.

Public protector Professor Thuli Mandonsela has been quoted as saying about the book: “Caryn Dolley’s Man Alone reads like a who’s who at the interface of politics, the underworld, and the shadow of South Africa’s ugly past.

“The book is principally based on the account of ANC underground operative turned intelligence officer, whose efforts to confront gangsterism and related organised crime turned him from hunter of criminals into the hunted.”

In the book, Caryn offers a host of new insight into how, what were once apartheid-era policing structures actually laid the foundations for the dirty dealing cop-gangster collusion; something that has tragically stayed with us in our relatively new found democratic era.

She managed to gain exclusive access to retired cop Lincoln’s life and, in the book, exposes many of the unsalubrious ploys that influenced our country’s trajectory.

For example, as mentioned in one description of the book “street-level killings become the flashpoints of deep state proxy wars; and it raises probing questions about who in Nelson Mandela’s realm backstabbed whom”.

Dolley says, “This is why I’ve written this book. Now is the time to try and change how it’s often only in retrospect that we truly realise we are pawns in a ‘game’ that devious proxies are playing to benefit their greedy masters.”

She adds: “This is the time for reconstruction and reconciliation. Major Geneneral Lincoln’s profile and his career trajectory pulls together what we know of state capture.

“Through detailing and contextualising Lincoln’s career, I expose just how manipulators have consistently sabotaged South Africa. State sabotage affects us all. If we understand how it manifests, we can prevent it in the future.”

Caryn comments: “In this book I go completely down a rabbit hole. Unravelling crime offers in fact more frustration than fascination.

“When one starts probing there are links – like it’s easy to think bouncers for example at nightclubs are separated from certain crime areas but actually all types of crime bleed into each other.

In her research, Dolley came to the realisation, which is not hard to see, that gangsterism involves a tangled web of deceit and what she unravelled, demonstrates, as many would needlessly have suspected, that “corruption goes right to the top”.

As to how gangsterism and some of the top Cape gangs are interlinked with the cops, she says many of these issues have been inherited from the apartheid era “where it was male dominated”.

Why this book, she was asked. Dolley answers, “I wanted to show and impart in this book that [this issue] will never cease. I also wanted to stand back and take a look at Andre Lincoln.

Asked if she fears for her life she mentioned that a sheriff of the court “rocked up at my home” – for a defamation case which could easily have been issued in a less intimidating fashion.

The book she concludes is a way of “letting go” and as she publishes it, she admits she is considering shifting to reporting on another issue that has equal relevance in our threatened world – environment.

She talks about sensationalism and real journalism as she ends what has been a fascinating discussion by a woman completely and utterly dedicated to what has become a calling in revealing the truth.

“There’s the Big Mac journalism versus the nourishing stew. I care a lot about the people affected by criminals.

Now she’ll be looking at climate justice…