South African court rules anti-Apartheid icon Albert Luthuli was murdered, not killed in accident

In South Africa, a major historical revelation: a court has ruled that anti-apartheid leader Albert Luthuli was murdered by members of the apartheid-era police, not killed in a train accident as officials claimed nearly six decades ago.

The judge rejected the findings of the original 1967 inquiry and named seven men, including railway workers and members of the special police branch as those responsible or complicit. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

This ruling, delivered 58 years after his death, restores what Luthuli’s family has always maintained: that the apartheid regime silenced one of its most powerful critics.

Luthuli, who led the African National Congress from 1952 until his death, had been banned under apartheid and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961 for his passionate advocacy of non-violence.

The ANC hailed the court’s decision as “a correction of a long-standing distortion of history” and “a moral victory not only for Luthuli’s family but for all the martyrs of the struggle against apartheid.”