Expert testimony suggests foul play in Albert Luthuli's death

THE possibility was that Inkosi Albert Luthuli was assaulted in the vicinity of the Mvoti River in Groutville, Stanger, before assailants carried him onto the railway bridge where they hastily left him, thinking he was dead, when they saw a train approaching.

- BONGANI HANS

This was the expert opinion of Warrant Officer Sunette Nel at the Pietermaritzburg High Court when she was testifying yesterday at the inquest into the Nobel Peace Prize recipient's death.

According to the outcome of the police forensic artist's investigation, which reconstructed what happened on the morning of July 21, 1967 - the day Luthuli succumbed to his head and body injuries - the injuries on Luthuli's body were not similar to those of a person who was hit by a train.

The ANC president-general died shortly after being brought to the Stanger Hospital with an open gash on the back of the head, bruises on both his arms, and damaged ribs on July 21, 1967.

"The size of a blunt force trauma, such as the bruises, the lacerations, and fractures on the back of the head, arms, and hands, indicated that Chief Albert Luthuli was trying to protect himself as he was most likely to be assaulted," said Nel.

She presented to the court gory pictures of someone, not Luthuli, with a partially decapitated body, limbs sustained during a train accident, which were not similar to those sustained by Luthuli. She was demonstrating what injuries someone hit by a train would suffer. Nel was refuting sworn statements, which train driver Stephanus Lategan, his conductor Pieter van Wyk, and his boilerman Daniel Greylings presented to the inquest held in the same year. She said during her investigation, she followed all the information she received, "no matter how ridiculous it was".