Overview
- Judge Nompumelelo Hadebe set aside the 1967 finding that Luthuli died in a train accident, ruling his fatal injuries were caused by an assault that amounted to murder.
- The court found the assault was carried out by apartheid security branch members acting in concert with South African Railways employees.
- Named as complicit were train driver Stephanus Albertus Lategan, fireman Daniel Greyling, conductor Pieter van Wyk, and detective sergeant Charles Barend Petrus Lewis, whose alleged crimes include perjury and being accessories after the fact.
- The judgment recommends that the Director of Public Prosecutions investigate the kidnapping and disappearance of alleged eyewitness Mbhemu Myandu.
- Government and ANC leaders welcomed the decision, though analysts note prosecutions are unlikely given the decades elapsed, missing witnesses, and untraced suspects, as broader apartheid-era inquests are being revisited.