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CAPE TOWN. — The investigation into a suspected plot by cops to kill former president Nelson Mandela at his 1994 inauguration was “covered up,” it emerged in the Western Cape High Court yesterday.

This was despite a handcrafted gun, meant to have been used in the assassination, being found in a national police office at the time. “That investigation went nowhere,” Major General Andre Lincoln testified yesterday.

He said there was a push by certain police officers to stifle the investigation into the planned assassination.

Lincoln was testifying in a case in which he is claiming R15 million in damages from the Minister of Safety and Security (now the Minister of Police).

He also wants judgment passed over, what his legal team has termed, the “malicious investigation and instigation of prosecution” against him.

This case commenced yesterday.

Lincoln testified that one of the major investigations he was involved in was a probe into “the attempted assassination plot against the president (Mandela)”.

“That investigation was totally covered up . . . the handcrafted rifle that was going to be used was hidden under the desk of a senior police officer in Pretoria,” Lincoln said.

“We reopened the investigation with lots and lots of resistance. That was one of the investigations that was ultimately taken away, it went nowhere.”

He said, in order to retrieve the handcraft rifle meant to kill Mandela, a search order had been obtained from the High Court in Pretoria — the first time such an order had been granted in South Africa for police to search their own colleagues.

In 1996, Mandela had appointed Lincoln to head up a special presidential investigative task unit, which would operate separately from the police and report to Mandela, former deputy president Thabo Mbeki and then Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi.

Lincoln was tasked with, among other matters, investigating Cape Town-based Italian mafioso Vito Palazzolo. The case continues. — News24.