The family of the late ANC president inkosi Albert Luthuli has welcomed the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) decision to reopen the inquest into his death.
The NPA announced on Wednesday that it would reopen the inquest into the death of Luthuli and ANC stalwart and well-known human rights lawyer, Griffiths Mxenge.
Luthuli who was elected as ANC president in 1952, died in 1967 while Mxenge was assassinated in 1981 in Umlazi, south of Durban.
In a statement the NPA in KwaZulu-Natal said both inquests will be conducted simultaneously in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday.
The NPA said the reopening of the inquest was done in terms of 'Section 17A(1) of the Inquests Act 58 of 1959 which stipulates that the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development may, on the recommendation of the Attorney General concerned, at any time after the determination of an inquest and if he/she deems it necessary in the interests of justice, request a judge president of a provincial division of the Supreme Court to designate any judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa to reopen that inquest, whereupon the judge thus designated shall reopen such inquest'.
It said that the Justice ministry reopened the inquests after recommendations from the National Director of Public Prosecutions.
Reacting to the news, Luthuli’s grandson Albert Mthunzi Luthuli said the family was happy with the decision which it had been pushing for for many years.
He said the family had always maintained that his grandfather had not been knocked down by a train - the original inquest stated that Luthuli succumbed to his injuries after being struck by a train.
The family said it always suspected that Luthuli - who awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 brought international awareness to the atrocities of Apartheid -was murdered on the orders of the Apartheid government.
Albert Mthunzi Luthuli said the explanation given by the doctors in the postmortem report, which suggested that his grandfather was deaf and blind at the time of his death, were false.
“We always questioned this report as a family because my grandfather was still able to see and hear properly at the time of his death. He left home alone and chatted with the people on his way to his shop. At the shop he had a short meeting with the shop manager before proceeding to a field across the railway line, so we wonder where doctors got the information that he was blind and deaf."
Albert Mthunzi Luthuli said the family suspected that his grandfather was given a blow to the back of his head and his body was placed on the railway line to make it appear that he was knocked down by the train.
He said the family was informed that there were several people who were involved in the plot, including officials in the then railway station masters office and doctors at the Stanger hospitals who they claim deliberately delayed Luthuli's transfer to a Durban hospital.
“Although it's late as many people that we suspected of being involved in my grandfather’s murder are now dead, we welcome the reopening of the inquest.
"We believe the Truth and Reconciliation Commission let many families of victims down by giving amnesty to apartheid murderers."