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Remembering South Africa's revolution

Buried somewhere under a large, comfortable house in Johannesburg's northern suburbs lies Nelson Mandela's gun.

A semi-automatic Makarov pistol, either Russian or Bulgarian-made, it was given to him by Colonel Biru Tadesse, an Ethiopian army officer who trained him in guerrilla insurgency in the early 1960s.

In his memoirs, Long Walk to Freedom, the future Nobel peace prize laureate wrote of his teacher: "I was grateful, both for the gun and his instruction."

The weapon would make a superb exhibit for a museum that will open next year at Liliesleaf Farm, next door to the house on George Avenue in Rivonia. But four separate searches have failed to find it.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)