Search continues for Mandela's Ethiopian gun

The Border Mail
July 5, 2006

Sensing the gun could bring trouble, Nelson Mandela buried it shortly before his arrest in August 1962. It remained hidden throughout his 27-year imprisonment and the first years of the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa when he became the first democratically elected president.

Now the search is on to find the Bulgarian semi-automatic Makarov pistol and give it pride of a place in a “struggle museum” to be built at the former secret headquarters of the African National Congress at Liliesleaf farm at Rivonia on the edge of Johannesburg.

The gun was given to Mr Mandela in 1961 by an Ethiopian colonel in Addis Ababa, where he had secretly gone for military training. He was recalled early for urgent consultations on the way forward for the ANC, which had been banned in 1960 and was debating the merits of the creation of an armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.

A short time later Mr Man- dela and a number of other ANC activists were arrested. The apartheid police tore the farm apart looking for weapons but found nothing.

Garth Benneyworth, an historian, said: “If the gun had been found, it would have proved conclusively that the ANC had a military wing and Mandela was part of it. Apart from that it would have linked the ANC with the communist bloc. In those days Bulgaria was as close to Russia as it was possible to get.

“We know from the records, they (the police) were very disappointed. It was the days of the ‘red menace’ and they wanted to prove a link.” Bulgaria was then a communist state and firmly in the orbit of the Soviet Union.

If the gun and Mr Mandela’s Ethiopian army uniform, buried alongside, had been found it is almost certain that he and other ANC leaders would have been charged with treason, which carried an automatic death sentence if found guilty. Instead, at the infamous Rivonia Trial, Mr Mandela and seven others, including ANC stalwarts such as Govan Mbeki, the father of President Mbeki, and Walter Sisulu were charged with sabotage.

That charge left the death sentence to the discretion of the judge.

The outcome of the trial was never in doubt but Mr Man- dela’s passionate speech in his own defence and the weight of international opinion helped to persuade the judge to opt for life imprisonment. Mr Mandela served 27 years, most of it on Robben Island, before he was released in 1990.

Mr Mandela had buried the gun, along with several important documents, in a pit about 50 paces from the main kitchen of the farm.

In an interview soon after his release Mr Mandela said: “Under cover of darkness we dug a pit, deep enough so that a plough wouldn’t uncover it, then wrapped the stuff in tin alloy and plastic, put a layer of gravel over it and a tin plate so the rain wouldn’t get in, and covered it with soil.”

Forty-four years on, Nicolas Wolpe, the founder of the Liliesleaf Trust, which has bought the 28-acre farm, is on a mission to find the gun.

He wants it to be on display along with other archival material in a library and archive centre being constructed on the site, and has brought in metal detectors to help in the search.

“It is important because we think it is the first piece of hardware ever given to Umkhonto we Sizwe in the liberation struggle and it was given to the commander-in-chief,” he said.