Inkosi Albert Luthuli sustained injuries that led to his death when three white men, who are believed to be steam goods train crew members, assaulted him, the inquest held at the Pietermaritzburg High Court heard on Wednesday.
An eyewitness to the incident was allegedly taken away by police a few days later to an unidentified police station to state what he saw, but he disappeared and his family never saw him again.
This was the testimony of pensioner Isaiah Mdletshe (70), who currently lives in Ntuzuma, north of Durban, on Wednesday.
The initial inquest held in September 1967 concluded that Luthuli died at the Stanger Provincial Hospital after being hit by a steam goods train, no one was held accountable and it was treated as an honest accident.
It was revealed in the original inquest that Luthuli walked on the Mvoti River railway bridge and was hit by the oncoming train, which was moving at a speed of 40 km/h.
However, in the current reopened inquest by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), some expert witnesses had testified that Luthuli’s injuries on both arms indicated that he was assaulted and was trying to protect himself from assailants. They said that had he been hit by the train, which was moving at that speed, his body would have been dismembered.
Luthuli was transported to the hospital, still alive and semi-unconscious with bruises on his arms and hands, a broken rib, and a gash on the back of his head.
Mdletshe said the information about the attack on Luthuli was related to him by the then-outgoing chairperson of the land claim committee of Tongaat, Phothwayo Mnyandu, in a meeting held in 2015 which Mdletshe was appointed to take over the chairmanship of the committee.
He said Mnyandu, who was born in Tongaat but his family were forced to leave the area by the apartheid government, told him about his brother, whose name he (Mdletshe) could not remember.
He said Mnyandu, who died about five years ago, told him that his brother witnessed white men from the goods train assaulting Luthuli, and one of the men was hitting Luthuli with a shovel.
He said Mnyandu told him that his brother was a messenger who would regularly deliver letters from Mnyandu’s father, Thomas Mnyandu, to Luthuli, and Mnyandu had bought a bicycle for his younger brother for delivery purposes.
He said on the day of the incident, Mnyandu’s brother rode the bicycle to Luthuli’s home to deliver a letter, but was told that Luthuli was in his sugarcane fields.
He then proceeded to the fields, but along the way, he saw a goods train standing still.
“He saw white men from the train hitting Chief Albert Luthuli.
“He said, when his brother noticed that these men were looking at him, he became scared and fled from the scene on his bicycle,” said Mdletshe in a statement that was read to the court.
Mdletshe said Mnyandu further told him that his brother arrived home, shocked and informed the family about what he had witnessed.
Mnyandu told Mdletshe that a few days later, after the incident, police came to the area asking around about a boy who rode a bicycle. He said when they found his brother at home, they took him away, telling the family members that they were taking him to a police station to make a statement about what he saw.
“They never saw the witness again. He disappeared,” he said.
It was revealed that the members of the Mnyandu family went to the nearby Verulam and Othongathi police stations, where police told them that they knew nothing about their loved one.
Advocate Ncedile Dunywa of the NPA told the court that Mnyandu’s niece, Sibongile Mnyandu-Nzimande, will attend court next week to testify about her nephew’s disappearance.
