How did Albert Luthuli, anti-apartheid hero, really die in 1967?

Al Jazeera

19-07-2025

At half past eight on the morning of Friday, July 21, 1967, following a quick breakfast with his wife, Chief Albert Luthuli set out from his home in Groutville, about 70km (45 miles) from Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa, on his normal daily routine.
The 69-year-old leader of the African National Congress (ANC) would 'walk three kilometres to open the family's general store in Nonhlevu, proceed to his three plots of sugarcane fields, and return to close the shop before going back home', his daughter-in-law, Wilhelmina May Luthuli, now 77, told a new inquest into his death at Pietermaritzburg High Court in May this year. The current justice minister has reopened the inquests into several suspicious apartheid-era deaths.
Luthuli reached the store by 9:30am and set off again to check on his sugar cane fields about half an hour later.
This much is not in dispute.
The only witness
Train driver Stephanus Lategan told a 1967 inquest into Luthuli's death that at 10:36am, as his 760-tonne train approached the Umvoti River Bridge, he noticed a pedestrian walking across the bridge and sounded his whistle. 'The Bantu [the official and derogatory term for Black people at the time] did not appear to take any notice whatsoever … He had walked about … 15 or 16 paces when my engine commenced to overtake him … He made no attempt to step towards the side or turn his body sideways.'
While the bridge was not designed for pedestrian traffic, Luthuli and the rest of his family often crossed it. His son, Edgar Sibusiso Luthuli, explained that when using the bridge, his father was 'very, very careful. When a train was coming, he would stand, not even walk, and hold onto the railings tightly. The space was big enough for the train to pass you on the bridge'.
But, according to Lategan, Luthuli did no such thing that morning. The train driver told the inquest that while the front of the train narrowly missed Luthuli, 'the corner of the cab struck him on the right shoulder and this caused him to be spun around and I saw him lose his balance and fall between the right-hand side of the bridge and the moving train.'
Lategan was the only witness to the collision. According to his testimony, when he realised he had hit Luthuli, he stopped the train as fast as he could.
Luthuli was still breathing but unconscious and bleeding from the mouth when Lategan said he reached him. He asked the station foreman and station master to call an ambulance, which took Luthuli to the nearest 'Bantu' hospital.
Fifty-eight years later – nearly another lifetime for Luthuli – a new inquest opened earlier this year. Experts testifying cast serious doubt on Lategan's version of events.
Police crime scene analyst Brenden Burgess was part of a team that used evidence from the first inquest to reconstruct the crash scene.
'The possibility of an accident scenario occurring as described by Mr Lategan is highly unlikely,' testified Burgess. 'Taking into account the stopping distance required to stop the locomotive where it came to rest at the scene … the brakes to the train would have to have been applied at least 170 metres before the entrance to the northern side of the bridge … The probability of the point of impact being on the southern side of the bridge is highly unlikely.'
In fact, experts say, it is likely that Luthuli was not walking along the bridge at all.
Steam train expert Lesley Charles Labuschagne went further. By his estimation, 'Luthuli was assaulted and his body taken to a railway track so it would look like he was hit by a train,' according to a Business Day article about his testimony, published in May.
Citing 'gaps relating to description of trauma, in terms of size as well as characterisation of injuries', forensic pathologist Dr Sibusiso Ntsele told the 2025 inquest that Luthuli's post-mortem report was 'substandard to say the least'. Ntsele concluded his testimony: 'I don't have enough to say he was hit by a train … What I have suggests that he is likely to have been assaulted.'
The inquest has been adjourned until October, when Judge Qondeni Radebe will rule on Luthuli's cause of death.
'Quietly, as a teacher'
There is no formal record of his birth, but it is known that Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born sometime in 1898 in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where his father worked as an interpreter for missionaries from the Congregational Church in America. This instilled in Luthuli a deep and lifelong faith and, according to the writer Nadine Gordimer, a way of speaking 'with a distinct American intonation'.
When Mvumbi (his preferred name, meaning 'continuous rain') was about 10 years old, his family moved back to South Africa and he was sent to live with his uncle, the chief of Groutville, so that he could attend school.
By 1914, Luthuli was 16 and had progressed as far as he could at the small school in Groutville. He spent a year at the Ohlange Institute, the first high school in South Africa founded and run by a Black person, John Dube, the first president of the ANC. That was followed by several years at Edendale, a Methodist mission school where, for the first time, Luthuli was taught by white teachers. In his autobiography, Luthuli refuted the accusation that mission schools produced 'black Englishmen'. Instead, he argued, 'two cultures met, and both Africans and Europeans were affected by the meeting. Both profited and both survived enriched.'
After graduating from Edendale with a teaching qualification, he accepted a post as principal (and sole employee) of a tiny Blacks-only intermediate school in the outpost of Blaauwbosch, where – under the mentorship of a local pastor – his Christian faith deepened.
Luthuli's performance at Blaauwbosch earned him a scholarship to Adams College, one of the most important centres for Black education in South Africa, just south of Durban.
Luthuli arrived at Adams with no political aspirations: 'I took it for granted that I would spend my days quietly, as a teacher,' he wrote in his autobiography, Let My People Go. But the influence of ZK Matthews (the principal of the high school at Adams, who would go on to become an influential ANC leader and academic) and some of the other teachers gradually opened his eyes to a political world of resistance.
Luthuli stayed at Adams College for 15 years. Only in 1935 did he succumb to pressure from the people of Groutville, who wanted him to return home to take up the chieftainship (his uncle had been 'fired' by the white government).
Becoming a chief – a salaried position, which meant he could be fired by the apartheid regime if he stepped too far out of line – meant taking a significant pay cut, but Luthuli saw it as a calling. Administering the needs of the 5,000 Zulu people of the Umvoti Mission Reserve, which had been founded by American missionary Reverend Aldin Grout from the Congressional Church in 1844, opened his eyes to the reality of life in South Africa: 'Now I saw, almost as though for the first time, the naked poverty of my people, the daily hurt to human beings.' As the chief explained in his autobiography: 'In Groutville, as all over the country, a major part of the problem is land – thirteen percent of the land for seventy percent of the people, and almost always inferior land…When I became chief I was confronted as never before by the destitution of the housewife, the smashing of families because of economic pressures, and the inability of the old way of life to meet the contemporary onslaught.'
Called to activism
Luthuli entered formal politics relatively late in life compared with others, only joining the ANC at the age of 46 in 1944, four years before apartheid officially began. Nelson Mandela, 20 years his junior, joined in the same year. Both men arrived at a time when the party was in dire need of new blood. The older generation of Black leaders was seen as too polite and accepting of the status quo to fight the increasingly draconian white minority government, with its rapidly restrictive legislation governing the lives of Black people.
But while Mandela and a few of his contemporaries shook up the national conversation with a more brash and confrontational style, Luthuli brought a more moderate brand of leadership to the Natal branch of the ANC. He was elected to the provincial executive less than a year after joining the party, and as president of the Natal branch in 1951.
Luthuli shot to national prominence as the chief volunteer of the 1952 Defiance Campaign, which saw thousands of people all around the country offering themselves up for arrest for contravening apartheid laws by doing things like sitting on whites-only benches and travelling on whites-only buses.
'He was duly stripped of his position as chief by the apartheid government, before being elected ANC president on the back of the youth vote that December,' explains Professor Thula Simpson of the University of Pretoria, one of the leading historians of the ANC. 'Luthuli was seen as a bridge between old and young. But he and Moses Kotane [secretary general of the communist SACP for 39 years] became the old guard when Mandela and co started agitating for violence.'
Luthuli's stance against violence
Mandela first publicly called for violent resistance in June 1953, telling a crowd in Sophiatown that, as he wrote in his autobiography, 'violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid and we must be prepared, in the near future, to use that weapon.' This did not align with Luthuli's approach.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote of being 'severely reprimanded' by Luthuli and the ANC's National Executive, 'for advocating such a radical departure from accepted policy [never, ever condoning violence]… Such speeches could provoke the enemy to crush the organisation entirely while the enemy was strong and we were as yet still weak. I accepted the censure, and thereafter faithfully defended the policy of nonviolence in public. But in my heart, I knew that nonviolence was not the answer.'
Luthuli was actually in court, giving evidence about the ANC's commitment to non-violent struggle, on March 21, 1960, when white police officers opened fire on a crowd of peaceful Black protesters at Sharpeville, killing at least 91 people. After Sharpeville, the calls for violent protest within the ANC grew louder and – despite Luthuli's opposition – in June 1961, Mandela was given permission to set up Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the party's military wing.
MK's founding document is 'the strangest declaration of war in the history of insurgency', says Simpson, with its focus on sabotaging government infrastructure but avoiding loss of life at all costs.
1961 was also the year Luthuli became the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. 'The citation from the committee noted that he had consistently stood for non-violence,' says Simpson. 'But the irony is that he was aware that his movement had committed to forming a sabotage squad, even if he personally had acquiesced to the decision without enthusiasm.'
The apartheid government initially prevented Luthuli from travelling to Oslo to receive the award, but eventually relented with a condition: He could not make overt mention of South African politics during his speech. He followed this restriction (he didn't say the word 'apartheid' once) but made a clear statement by wearing traditional Zulu attire.
By sheer coincidence, Luthuli's route back from Oslo saw him arrive in Durban on 15 December: The exact evening that MK began its operations.
Despite their differences, says Simpson, 'Mandela liked and respected Luthuli and felt the need to consult with him. Mandela wanted the older man's consent, authorisation and approval…'
This close relationship would lead to Mandela's arrest and imprisonment for 27 years. In 1961, after the banning of the ANC, Mandela went undercover. Dubbed the Black Pimpernel, he was the most wanted man in the country. In August 1962, posing as the chauffeur of white playwright and activist Cecil Williams, Mandela drove to Groutville to brief Luthuli about a military training trip he'd taken to other African countries. One of the people Mandela met on that trip was a police informant, and on their way back to Johannesburg, Mandela and Williams were ambushed by police. 'I knew in that instant that my life on the run was over,' Mandela later recalled.
Rewriting history
Many anti-apartheid leaders died in suspicious circumstances over the 46 years that the apartheid regime survived. Perhaps the most famous of these was Steve Biko, who died following police torture in 1977. The official inquest into Biko's death absolved the police, finding that he could not have died 'by any act or omission involving an offence by any person'. Despite a local and international outcry, the truth would only come out at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1999, after apartheid had ended. Presided over by Desmond Tutu (himself a Nobel peace laureate), the TRC held more than 2,500 hearings between 1996 and 2002.
Controversially, the TRC had the power to grant full amnesty for politically motivated crimes, provided the perpetrators made honest and complete confessions. Four security policemen admitted to the killing of Biko at TRC hearings. But the commanding officer, Gideon Nieuwoudt, was denied amnesty on the grounds that he did not prove that his crime was politically motivated. Nieuwoudt was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the murder of the 'Motherwell four' – four Black policemen who had been leaking information to the ANC and were killed in a car bomb planted by the authorities. Nieuwoudt died in prison in 2005.
Since the TRC concluded, there have been other inquests into mysterious deaths, most notably the 2017 inquest into Ahmed Timol's 1971 death. According to police reports at the time, Timol had jumped from the 10th floor of the Johannesburg Central Police Station after being overcome with shame at disclosing sensitive information about his colleagues during interrogation. A 1972 inquest ruled that he died by suicide. 'To accept anything other than that the deceased jumped out of the window and fell to the ground can only be seen as ludicrous,' ruled Magistrate JL de Villiers. 'Although he was questioned for long hours, he was treated in a civilised and humane manner.'
Timol's death shone a light on the many (73 in total) mysterious deaths of activists in police custody during apartheid. These were the inspiration for Chris van Wyk's satirical poem 'In Detention':
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself while washing
He slipped from the ninth floor
He hung from the ninth floor
He slipped on the ninth floor while washing
He fell from a piece of soap while slipping
He hung from the ninth floor
He washed from the ninth floor while slipping
He hung from a piece of soap while washing.
The TRC found that there was a 'strong possibility that at least some of those detainees who allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of the window were either accidentally dropped or thrown'. This was not enough for the Timol family, however, and, in 2017, they succeeded in having the 1972 inquest reopened.
On October 12, 2017, Judge Billy Mothle set a historic precedent by overturning the first inquest's findings. Mothle ruled that 'Timol's death was brought about by an act of having been pushed from the tenth floor or the roof' of the building, and that there was a prima facie case of murder against the two policemen who interrogated Timol on the day he was pushed to his death. The policemen in question had already died, but a third – Joao Rodrigues – was charged as an accessory to the murder. Rodrigues died before his case went to trial.
Seeking a motive
The Luthuli family hope to receive similar vindication when the inquest into his death reaches its conclusion in October this year. But, looking at the case objectively, Simpson is hard-pressed to find a motive for the murder. While Luthuli was the ANC's official leader at the time of his death in 1967, a combination of ill-health, government banning orders and his opposition to violence had rendered him something of a figurehead without much political clout by the mid-1960s.
'There's no clear motive for his murder,' says Simpson. 'He'd ceased to be a threat to the regime. If anything, his funeral was an opportunity for protest.' Of course, Simpson adds, 'If there was a conspiracy, the 1967 inquest would never have found it. Even if Luthuli's death was accidental, there's loads of reason to doubt the apartheid government's version.'
In 2025, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola has been on something of a mission to expose apartheid-era cover-ups. On the same day that the Luthuli inquest was reopened, he announced plans to reopen the inquests into the deaths of Mlungisi Griffiths Mxenge in 1981 (a civil rights lawyer who was stabbed 45 times by a police 'death squad') and Booi Mantyi, who was shot dead for allegedly throwing stones at police in 1985. Last month, the inquest into the 1985 murder of the 'Cradock Four' was reopened.
While most of the perpetrators of apartheid-era crimes are now dead (or very old), Lamola is pressing ahead. 'With these inquests, we open very real wounds which are more difficult to open 30 years into our democracy,' he said. 'But nonetheless, the interest of justice can never be bound by time…the truth must prevail.'
Uncovering the truth is especially important for Luthuli's family. 'It's a very exciting moment for us,' said Sandile Luthuli, the chief's grandson and CEO of the Social Housing Regulatory Authority. Now in his early 50s, Sandile doesn't have memories of his grandfather, but talks about Luthuli being deeply religious: 'He conducted church services on his own.' He also highlights the role that Luthuli's wife, Nokukhanya, played in 'keeping the home fires burning'.
While Sandile does admit to 'some anxiety' about the outcome of the inquest, he is confident it will finally set the record straight. 'This is the moment that we have been waiting for as a family … to really peel the layers of … his untimely assassination at the hands of the apartheid government.'
The inquest has also reminded the nation of South Africa and the world at large of Luthuli's incredible legacy. As Martin Luther King Jr wrote in a letter to Luthuli in 1959: 'You have stood amid persecution, abuse, and oppression with a dignity and calmness of spirit seldom paralleled in human history. One day all of Africa will be proud of your achievements.'