Hunt begins to find historic Mandela handgun
A historian is leading a search for a handgun that Nelson Mandela buried at a farm outside Johannesburg before his arrest by apartheid police in 1962, the owner of the site said Friday.
Nicholas Wolpe, the founder of the Liliesleaf Trust -- named after the farm where Mandela and other African National Congress (ANC) stalwarts met regularly in the 1960s -- said the gun was of tremendous historical value.
"It was a gun he got from an Ethiopian colonel Biru Tadessa just before his military training there was cut short after he was called back," Wolpe told AFP.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The gun is thought to be a Makarov made in the former Soviet Union.
"It was probably one of the first pieces of hardware given to the ANC," he said. "That and the fact it was gifted to Mandela makes it very special."
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