A witness who was a clerk at Stanger Hospital where the late former ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli was admitted after he was reportedly hit by a goods train in 1967, has testified at the re-opened inquest in Pietermaritzburg High Court.

Mahomed Manjoo informed the court that after noticing that it was Chief Luthuli who was being checked in at the hospital unaccompanied, he alerted some local ANC leaders.

The Luthuli family wants the court to overturn findings of the initial apartheid era inquest that ruled Luthuli’s death as an accident.

Evidence leader Advocate Anne Chuene cross-examined Manjoo.

Chuene: Is there anything extra ordinary that you may have noticed about his clothing, the condition of his clothing?

Majoo: As I learnt later on, I was told that he was knocked by a train and fell on the railway bridge, and then I was told that, on the other account from Mr. Samuel, that it was in a yard. There’s two different scenarios there. In terms of injuries, if it was in Umvoti bridge and if the train knocked him on speed, the injuries would have been massive. Also, if he fell on the side of the railway track, his whole body would have been soiled with the sand and the grass and whatever you have that would have been on the side of the track.

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