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File Image: Court gavel and a cone.
The inquests into the deaths of ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli and human rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge will be reopened in the Pietermaritzburg High Court next Monday.
Luthuli who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 was a banned person when he was allegedly struck by a goods train in Groutville north of Durban in 1967.
The first inquest found no criminal culpability on anyone’s part.
Mxenge was brutally stabbed to death in Umlazi south of Durban in 1981.
Three members of the security police’s notorious Vlakplaas unit were tried for his murder years later but were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) before they could be sentenced.
KwaZulu-Natal National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson, Natasha Ramkisson-Kara says, “Following the collaboration between the NPA KZN TRC Unit and the NPA TRC Unit at the national office, the DPCI and the National Archives, the NPA will be presenting evidence before the court in an attempt to have the initial findings, into the deaths of Chief Luthuli and Mxenge, overturned.”
“The purpose of inquests is to determine how a person died and if anyone should be held responsible for their death. The NPA and its partners will endeavour to address the atrocities of the past and assist in providing closure to the families of the victims of these crimes.”
