Mbuyisa Makhubo

Mbuyisa Makhubu (born 1957 or 1958) is a South African anti-Apartheid activist. He was seen carrying Hector Pieterson in a photograph taken by Sam Nzima after Pieterson was shot during the Soweto Uprising in 1976.[1]

Hector Pieterson being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo after being shot by South African police. His sister, Antoinette Sithole runs beside them.

After the photograph was released, Makhubu was harassed by the security services, and was forced to flee South Africa. His mother, Nombulelo Makhubu, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that she received a letter from him from Nigeria in 1978, but that she had not heard from him since.[2] She died in 2004, seemingly without knowledge of what had happened to her son.[3] Mbuyisa was one of a number of South African activists given refuge in Nigeria immediately following the Soweto incident. He was one of three who were settled in a boarding high school in South-Western Nigeria - Federal Government College, during the 1976-1977 academic year. But all failed to settle, and had moved on within the year.[4]

In 2013, claims emerged that a man, Victor Vinnetou, imprisoned in Canada for the previous eight years on immigration charges was Makhubu.[5] Genetic tests were conducted to determine whether he was indeed Mbuyisa Makhubo.[6] It was later reported that the DNA tests did not substantiate the man's claim to be Makhubu, to the disappointment of Makhubu's family, [4] though the DNA test was reported to have been done on a family member without blood relations to both parents.[7]