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[FILE IMAGE] Chief Albert Luthuli and Griffiths Mxenge’s family and ANC leaders attend the re-opening of the inquests into their deaths at the Pietermaritzburg High Court in KwaZulu-Natal on April 14, 2025.
The African National Congress’s (ANC) Jeff Radebe has testified before the reopened inquest into the death of Chief Albert Luthuli that the party has never believed that Luthuli died in a train accident.
Radebe, the ANC’s Provincial Task Team Convener in KwaZulu-Natal, is testifying at the inquest in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on behalf of the party.
Luthuli died in July 1967, after he was reportedly struck by a goods train. The initial inquest ruled that his death was an accident.
Radebe believes the Apartheid government was threatened by Luthuli’s political influence and leadership in the liberation struggle within the ANC.
“The dynamic and effective leadership of Chief Luthuli changed the ANC forever. From a conservative organisation in 1912 characterised by representations, to a radical ANC of the Defiance Campaign from 1952 culminating in the decision to embark on the armed struggle in 1961, Chief Luthuli was regarded by the apartheid state as a danger to it. His overriding influence amongst the people across the colour line, his international prestige, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the imminent start of the war in Zimbabwe by both ANC and ZAPU was the final straw that made the apartheid regime take the decision to end his life. There is no other reasonable explanation for this gravely dastardly act of savagery as will be convincingly articulated by professional Doctors who painstakingly show the real medical causes of the death of this great Son of the Soil, a Man of the People.”
Radebe informs the court about how Luthuli was persecuted, like many black South Africans, by the Apartheid government.
“A week before Deputy President Tambo and James Chikerema, the Vice President of ZAPU, made that military command call, ‘To war Comrades’, the apartheid regime assassinated President Luthuli in Groutville and covered up this brutal murder as a goods train accident. No one in the ANC, the Liberation Movement, and the freedom-loving people across the globe believed the fictional story of a train accident. This cold-blooded killing of President Luthuli was the beginning of the acts of assassination of Liberation Movement leaders. This was followed by Frelimo President Eduardo Mondlane in 1969 and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau in 1973.”
VIDEO | Inquest into the death of Chief Albert Luthuli – 22 April 2025:
