South Africa
5 decades on, family of Chief Albert Luthuli seeks answers about his death─── 09:35 Fri, 29 Mar 2019
Five decades after his death, family members of Inkosi Albert Luthuli are pushing ahead with their own investigation, saying they were repeatedly fed lies about his murder.
The family of the Noble Prize winner is seeking closure and their probe into his death may lead to the reopening of his inquest.
On paper, the former ANC president died in 1967 after he was hit by a train on a railway bridge close to the home he had been confined to by the apartheid regime in Groutville.
"We have always believed what the apartheid government said about our grandfather was a lie," said Luthuli's grandson, Mthunzi Luthuli.
"It has been a mystery to me and all South Africans concerned about justice, especially apartheid crimes and more importantly, what happened to the man who shaped the politics of the ANC and the country in the 1960s," he exclusively told News24.
Luthuli added that the government had failed the victims of apartheid crimes by overlooking prosecution and carried on as if those victims had found closure.
"My grandfather died with no answers to his passing, a man so significant to the liberation of the country, and we are expected to go on just like that," he said.
The grandson of the ANC president of 15 years attended the court proceedings of former apartheid era cop Joao Jan Rodrigues who applied for a permanent stay of prosecution for his alleged involvement in the killing of anti-apartheid activist, Ahmed Timol, in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Timol was pushed from the 10th floor of the then notorious John Vorster Square, now known as the Johannesburg police station, in 1971 at the age of 29.
Timol and Black Consciousness Movement founder and anti-apartheid activist and author Steve Biko, are just some of 73 anti-apartheid activists who died in detention between 1963 and 1990.
Biko died in a prison cell in Pretoria.
Luthuli said that he was attending the court proceedings on Thursday to observe how the "apartheid perpetrators" are defending themselves so that he can prepare for litigation when the time comes.
Also keeping a closer look at Timol's case is the family of late anti-apartheid activist, Imam Abdullah Haron, who also want to have an inquest into his "mysterious death" reopened.
Haron is said to have tripped down a flight of stairs and died while in solitary confinement after being detained under the disreputable apartheid security laws.
The family did not accept the reasons given for Haron's death.
