(CNN) -- As a young freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela stepped out of a farmhouse hideout in South Africa, took 20 strides and dug a hole on the sprawling land. He leaned over, put in a semiautomatic pistol and 200 rounds of ammunition, and carefully put a khaki uniform over them.
After covering them with heaps of soil, he sauntered back into his rural hideout in northern Johannesburg -- hoping to retrieve them soon. He never got a chance to fire a shot with the Makarov pistol. A few weeks after he buried it at the farm in Rivonia, he was hurled into prison for the next 27 years.
In this particular case, the gun was buried with the intention of retrieval shortly. Mandela never got the chance, being imprisoned for over a generation and becoming a symbol of the anti-apartheid cause. While his group's methods have been historically softened ("freedom fighters"? Really?), it's interesting to see that this little tidbit is of interest today. It's pretty interesting that they mention him as a "freedom fighter" and talk about the gun as a gift from a foreign general, yet do not mention the background of the African National Congress...
And if it's truly a Makarov, $20 says when they finally dig it - and the ammo - up, it'll work...
That is all.
4 comments:
But nobody needs a gun to resist tyranny.
And it'll still have a Trigger Pull measured in Ft-Lbs!
Mine has the official East German trigger, with the pull measured in panzers.....
This is an episode he mentions in his autobiography, which i read as a teenager and is very interesting.
He also talks about going for military training in another african country (nigeria? i forget). At one point I think he blows up a small power station, but is not able to organize an armed opposition to apartheid.
Post a Comment