A family's quest for justice

THE family members of Inkosi Albert Luthuli, who died half a century ago, are still grieving as if the tragedy happened yesterday, and have accused the ANC-led government of dragging its feet in bringing his killers to book which they said robbed them of closure.

- BONGANI HANS

Soon after the adjournment of the inquest into the Nobel Peace Prize winner, his first grandson, Mthunzi Luthuli, said the pain was still fresh in their hearts.

"It (lack of arrest) affects us in many ways. The first one is that it keeps this thing alive in our memories. If somebody dies, you bury them, you come to terms with what happened, you close the chapter, and you move on. But our situation is such that we have not been able to close the chapter, so the pain has lived on with the family since then," said Luthuli, who was only three months old when his grandfather was killed.

Luthuli was repeating to this reporter what he told the reopened inquest on Thursday, which is currently taking place at the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

He shocked many when he gave his testimony before Judge Qondeni Redebe on Thursday, attacking the ANC as it was unexpected that he would turn against the party that his grandfather was the president of when he was killed. Luthuli was killed on July 21, 1967, in what the initial inquest held in the same year concluded, was hit by a goods train.

He said the political developments, which started with the birth of the democratic system in 1994, "sold the black people out".

"The reason why it has taken so long to reopen this inquest and to investigate all of the murders that happened is because the ANC struck a deal with the National Party for the National Party to hand over power to the ANC," said Luthuli.

He stated that the deal enabled the establishment of the democratic dispensation. "The demand was that those who committed the atrocities should not be prosecuted. There were lots of other demands such as land, economy, wealth, and all of that."