Searching for Soweto: mystery of a man whose image defined apartheid brutality

Forty years after the Soweto uprising, and a photo of a young man carrying a dead child ricocheted around the world, his identity remains shrouded in mystery

It was a photo seen around the world: Mbuyisa Makhubu, his face twisted with anguish, carrying 13-year-old Hector Pieterson in his arms after the child was fatally shot by South Africa’s apartheid-era police.

Thousands of black children and teenagers had taken to the streets of Soweto in June 1976 to protest at being forced to study in Afrikaans. Police responded to the peaceful protest with force, spraying bullets at the schoolchildren.

The images ricocheted around the world, helping to galvanise the international community against the brutality of the apartheid regime.

What came next for South Africa was well documented, from the collapse of the regime to the Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994.

But as the world marks 40 years since the Soweto uprising, the fate of Makhubu remains shrouded in mystery – a mystery that spans the globe and links the anti-apartheid hero to a man who has spent more than 11 years languishing in a Canadian prison after falling afoul of Canada’s immigration laws.

In the days following the uprising, Makhubu’s image became synonymous with resistance, turning the 18-year-old into a target for apartheid police and forcing him to flee the country. A 1978 letter, sent from Nigeria, was the last time his family heard from him.

A false identity

In 1988, a man named Victor Vinnetou landed in Toronto using a Zambian passport. The passport was later determined to be false by immigration authorities in Canada.

After a failed asylum application, Vinnetou disappeared. He was picked up by immigration authorities in Toronto in 2004. It was suspected Vinnetou was using a false identity and in 2012 an investigator was tasked with tracking down his real identity.

The investigator homed in on South Africa, raising the possibility that the man – who had at that point been held in custody for eight years – could be the same person from the iconic photo of the Soweto uprising.

The connection sparked excitement in South Africa, with some members of Makhubu’s family throwing their support behind the idea. “I’m convinced it is my uncle,” his nephew Zonghizile Makuba, 37, told the Guardian. “We have seen the picture and even I look like him. He has family features.”

The man, he said, is able to describe the moment of carrying 13-year-old Hector Pieterson in vivid detail. “The problem is he says he didn’t want to reveal his identity because he thinks the apartheid government is still in power,” said Makuba. The man’s refusal to return to South Africa endured even after being told the African National Congress (ANC) was now in power, he said.

Other family members pointed to the man’s birthmark and his knowledge of the family home and history to back the assertion that the man is South Africa’s long-lost hero.

But there is scant evidence to support the link. South African officials travelled to Canada in 2013, hoping to bring him home to a hero’s welcome. Their efforts were stymied when the man – who they managed to establish was from South Africa – refused to answer most of their questions and accused the ANC of killing his parents. DNA tests were carried out using Makhubu’s surviving relatives in South Africa; the first test was contaminated and the second was inconclusive.

Detained in Canada

As the case played out, Vinnetou remained in custody. Border authorities pointed to his refusal to help them confirm his identity to explain how he wound up as the longest-serving immigration detainee in Canada, kept in a prison cell for more than 11 years at the whim of an immigration detention system described by critics as a “legal black hole”.

Mainly due to space constraints, as many as a third of those in immigration custody in Canada are held in provincial jails, often crammed in a small cell for upwards of 21 hours a day and without access to international calls or legal counsel, according to advocates.

Canada remains one of the few western countries in the world without any limit on the detention of immigrants, leading to situations like that of Vinnetou, who spent years in prison despite never being charged with a crime.

Time in detention can be particularly stressful for asylum seekers or those who have fled oppressive regimes, wreaking havoc on their mental state. “I’ve watched it make people crazy,” Macdonald Scott, an immigration consultant for Toronto law firm Carranza LLP, told the Guardian earlier this year. “I’ve watched it slowly kill my people.”

Concerns about Vinnetou were raised at a recent detention hearing by his lawyer, who hinted that he may be suffering undiagnosed paranoia and delusions. Vinnetou was released on bail in January, with the understanding he would return to South Africa once the appropriate documents are secured. South Africa, however, refuses to issue the needed papers to him, leaving him in legal limbo in Canada.

Makhubu’s sister pointed to Vinnetou’s fragile mental state to explain her hesitation in confirming whether he was the anti-apartheid icon. “I don’t know,” 62-year-old Ntsiki Gwendolyn Makhuba told the Guardian. “There is a [physical] resemblance but [the man] is clearly mentally unstable and very confused.”