I have both the Mnandi and the Mountaineer II. Both knives are extremely well made. In particular, when you first pick up the Mountaineer II you'll feel like you could build a house with it.
My only complaint is that I find the Mountaineer II's handle a little rough on my hands during heavy use (chopping wood, whittling for long periods of time, etc.). A pair of gloves fixes that problem, however. Or, if you work with your hands and have the calluses to prove it, you probably won't have any trouble with it at all. (I work with a keyboard all day long, and I have the too-soft hands to show for it.)
The Mountaineer II's handle is large enough for a VERY small PSK; some fishing line and hooks, a fire starter of some kind, some emergency tinder and so forth. I've been thinking about mating the Mountaineer II with a
survival sheath for a more robust PSK.
The nice thing about that Mountaineer II's round handle is that it's easy to use the knife as a kind of a drill.
I bought the Mountaineer II to be my woods walking knife, so I use it for most camping chores. It's also what I will depend on if I ever need to build an emergency shelter. Consequently, my need for gloves with the knife sort of bothers me as I'm a bit SOL if I lost my gloves but still had the knife. So I'm going to do one of two things. First, I might replace it with a knife with a more traditional design that hopefully won't raise blisters during heavy use. Or, better yet, start chopping at wood with the Mountaineer II multiple times a week until I build up the calluses that it requires.
Even better still would be to go camping a lot more often than I have been, but life's circumstances are preventing that right now.
As I said above, I expect that if you don't have "keyboard soft hands" you'll be very very happy with the Mountaineer II.
As for the Mnandi, you can read up on my impression of it
here.
