Mbuyisa Makhubo

Mbuyisa Makhubu (born 1957 or 1958) is the 18-year-old South African school boy seen carrying Hector Pieterson in a famous photograph taken after the latter was shot during the Soweto Uprising in 1976.

After the photograph was released, he 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. She died in 2004, seemingly without knowledge of what had happened to her son. 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, Warri during the 1976/77 academic year. But all failed to settle, and had moved on within the year.

In 2013, claims emerged that a man imprisoned in Canada for the previous eight years on immigration charges was Makhubu. Genetic tests were conducted to determine whether this man is indeed Mbuyisa Makhubo. 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.