Luthuli Detachment: OR Tambo Reacts to Luthuli’s Mysterious Death
On 22 July 1967, following a memorial service held for the late President-General of the African National Congress (ANC), Inkosi Albert Luthuli, in Lusaka, ANC leader, Oliver Tambo, was interviewed by a reporter of the Zambia Mail newspaper. Tambo maintained that there was some “mystery” surrounding the death of Inkosi Luthuli, as it was reported that he was struck by a goods train, the day before, on 21 July 1967. Luthuli, who was a partially deaf sixty-nine-year-old African man, who was also virtually blind in his left eye and partially sighted on his right, was crossing a railway bridge over the Umvoti River, north of Durban, when he was allegedly “struck by a goods train”.
After the interview, Tambo was taken by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Commander Joe Modise to visit Dube’s Farm, west of Lusaka. At the Farm, there was a number of MK cadres, from various parts of Zambia and Tanzania, who were gathered there to listen to Tambo’s address. Before these cadres, Tambo praised Inkosi Albert Luthuli as a great fighter who died fighting for the rights of his people. He then mentioned that he had been phoning Stanger since 21 July, after getting the news of Luthuli’s passing on, without receiving any reply.
According to Tambo, the apartheid government was responsible for his death; and Luthuli’s passing would go down in history because immediately after his burial, the ANC’s army would invad
