Timing of Luthuli's death, prompt call for ambulance improbable in 1967, inquest told

JOHANNESBURG - Researcher Dr Jabulani Mzaliya says it is improbable that the driver of the train that killed Chief Albert Luthuli was able to call an ambulance two minutes after the incident.

Mzaliya said that because the incident took place in 1967, when telephone booths existed, this was not possible.

On Friday, Mzaliya testified at the reopened inquest into Luthuli's death currently being heard in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg.

Luthuli died in 1967, with the official records from the apartheid government saying he was hit by a steam train.

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Mzaliya said that the affidavit of the train driver said he hit Luthuli at 10.38.

Meanwhile, the ambulance driver's affidavit said that the call to the hospital was lodged at 10.40.

Mzaliya said that this doesn't make sense because the train driver would have had to do much more within those two minutes, including walking to the train station to access a telephone.

"The station master, Pretorius, phoned the hospital through the manual telephone, and sometimes you had to hold for more time than the two minutes it suddenly took for the hospital to know there is a train accident, so this does not correlate in terms of time."

Earlier in the inquest, a detective charged with re-investigating Luthuli’s death told the court he could not trace the train and ambulance drivers.

The inquest resumes on Tuesday.