Sam Nzima, the South African photographer who took the iconic image of a black high school student carrying a fatally wounded fellow student away from the gunfire of apartheid police in the Soweto student riots of 1976, has died at 83.

South Africa's state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, reported that Nzima died in the northwestern city of Nelspruit Saturday night. His son, Thulani Nzima, said the photographer collapsed on Thursday and was taken to a hospital.

Nzima's photograph of the Soweto student uprising galvanized international public opinion against apartheid, South Africa's system of racial discrimination that ended in 1994. Harassed by the apartheid regime, Nzima left Johannesburg and in 1998 won the copyright for the much reproduced photo. In his later years he taught photography in rural Bushbuckridge.