By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
A new inquest will be held into the mysterious death in 1967 of South Africa’s anti-apartheid leader and first Nobel Peace Prize winner Chief Albert Luthuli.
Its inquest found that the Nobel laureate had died in an accident after being hit by a train as he was walking by a railway line near his home in KwaZulu-Natal province.
But campaigners suspected the regime killed him and covered it up by claiming he had died of a fractured skull after being struck by a train.
At the time of his death, Chief Luthuli was not allowed to leave his residential area in Groutville or take part in politics.
He was the leader of the banned African National Congress (ANC) – the liberation movement that came to power in 1994 when the system of apartheid ended.
Chief Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for spearheading the campaign against apartheid – an award that was later given to three other South Africans: Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984 and Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in 1993.
The inquest, 57 years after Luthuli’s death, follows a recommendation from the National Prosecuting Authority.
Inquests into the deaths of lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Griffiths Mxenge and civic leader Booi Mantyi will also be reopened.
Mxenge’s body was found with multiple stab wounds at a stadium near Durban, the main city in KwaZulu-Natal, in 1981. His throat had been slit open.
Mantyi was killed in an alleged altercation with the apartheid regime’s police force in 1985 in the small town of De Aar in the Northern Cape province.
An inquest at the time found no-one was responsible for his death.
The Justice Ministry’s Chrispin Phiri says the first inquest did not consider certain mathematical and scientific principles.
“The Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, has accepted and acted on recommendations from the National Prosecuting Authority to re-open inquests into the deaths of Chief Albert Luthuli, Mlungisi Griffiths Mxenge and Booi Mantyi.
“With these inquests, we open very real wounds, which are more difficult to open 30 years into our democracy. Nonetheless, the interest of justice can never be bound by time, and the truth must prevail.”
Phiri says the Judge President of the KZN High Court will be approached to reopen the inquests.
The announcement of the latest inquests comes just over two weeks before South Africa holds its general election.
The ANC is facing its toughest electoral test in 30 years, with opinion polls suggesting it could lose its outright majority for the first time.