Disturbing details in Albert Luthuli’s death

INKOSI Albert Luthuli’s daughter-in-law 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

Wilhelmina May Luthuli, 77, yesterday 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 yesterday gave testimony at the National Prosecuting Authority-led inquest into the death of Luthuli. The hearings started at the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday.