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A South African court ruled Thursday that the death of Nobel Peace Laureate Albert Luthuli in 1967 was the result of a deliberate “assault” by apartheid security forces, not a train accident as originally claimed.
Judge Nompumelelo Hadebe officially set aside the finding of the 1967 apartheid inquest, which had claimed Luthuli—the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1960) and former president-general of the African National Congress (ANC)—died after being struck by a goods train.
The court’s new finding concluded that Luthuli died from a “fractured skull, cerebral haemorrhage, and concussion of the brain associated with an assault.”
Judge Hadebe explicitly attributed the death to “assault by members of the security special branch of the South African police,” who acted in concert with employees of the South African Railway Company.
The ruling named seven individuals, including railway personnel and police officers, as having committed or been complicit in the murder, though their current whereabouts are unknown.
This judgement is part of the South African government’s ongoing initiative to reopen inquests into the suspicious deaths of several political activists who opposed the white-minority apartheid regime before its end in 1994.
