The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has reopened the inquests into the deaths of ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli and lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Griffiths Mxenge.

According to apartheid regime’s records, Luthuli was killed after being hit by a train near the Gledthrow station in KwaZulu-Natal. But years later, speculation remains about the circumstances surrounding the incident. The National Director of Public Prosecutions noted that the apartheid-era inquest failed to consider certain mathematical and scientific principles.

Mxenge was assassinated in November 1981 in Umlazi near Durban. He was brutally stabbed 45 times and his throat slit. The apartheid inquest failed to identify the perpetrators of this crime. The apartheid entity is said to have spied on Mxenge’s office, and his dogs were poisoned.

The NPA said that nine years after his death, the killed were revealed through a confession drafted by apartheid-era hit man, Butana Almond Nofemela. In 1997, Nofemela together with two other apartheid-era policeman David Tshikalange and Dirk Coetzee were found guilty of the murder of Mxenge.

However, they were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission before they could be sentenced by the High Court. It resulted in the discontinuation of the trial.