Wilhelmina Luthuli reveals grim truths about Albert Luthuli’s death

INKOSI Albert Luthuli’s daughter-in-law on Tuesday provided gory details of the struggle icon’s state in 1967 when he had been brought to Stanger Hospital with a gash to his head.

- BONGANI HANS [e-mail]

Wilhelmina May Luthuli, 77, said she was 20 years old when she saw the father of her husband lying in a room with a deep head injury, which was not bandaged.

For decades the original inquest had maintained that Luthuli, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, died after being hit by a goods train on July 21, 1967, in Stanger, on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, but his family has maintained that he was murdered by the Apartheid State.

Wilhelmina May Luthuli on Tuesday gave testimony at the National Prosecuting Authority-led inquest into the death of Luthuli in Stanger. The hearings started at the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday.

She said that the report of the original inquest held in 1967, shortly after Luthulis death, was a cover up to protect the apartheid government connected killers.

She said that on that fateful morning, Luthuli woke up to follow his normal daily routine, which was to walk three kilometers to open the family's Nonhlevu General Dealer shop, proceed to his three plots of sugarcane fields, and return to close the shop before going back home.

She said she was busy with her domestic duties when she received news that her father-in-law had been gravely hurt.