Albert Luthuli’s daughter-in-law details the trauma of the day he died

INKOSI Albert Luthuli’s daughter-in-law yesterday provided 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

Wilhelmina May Luthuli, 77, said she was 20 years old when she saw her husband's father 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 said that he was murdered by the Apartheid State.

Wilhelmina May Luthuli yesterday 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 Luthuli’s 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.