In 1985 a Live Aid benefit concert was organized to raise funds to appeal to the famine crisis in Ethiopia. The predicament was broadcasted through a series of images shot by Kenyan photojournalist Mohamed “Mo” Amin in October 1984.
Born in the outskirts of Nairobi in August 1943, Mo was the second born of nine children. Back then, Eastleigh was one of the areas where Asian settlers and railway employees in the colony set up homes and started families. When he was seven, the Amin family packed their belongings and relocated to Chang’ombe in Dar es Salaam where Mo would find the road he was destined to take. It actually happened two years later when he was nine; he discovered cameras and was fascinated with a simple fact that with a single snap an image could be produced. This discovery did something to young Mo who immediately had the burning desire to have a camera of his own. In those days, cameras were a luxury and because he knew it wouldn’t be handed to him on a silver platter, he decided to save. Two years later with 40 Shillings to his name, Mo bought his first camera.
A snap here and a snap there helped him understand the importance of light and angles when taking pictures.
When he joined Azania Secondary School in Dar, he dedicated his free time to his camera. He joined the school’s Photography Club and was soon recognized as the school’s photographer. In this way Mo had to avail himself for school fashion shows and sports events. He would then develop the images in the Club’s dark room located within the school premises and organize the photos that he would sell and those that he would reserve for his personal album. The business-man in him was slowly becoming.
At 19, more determined and with another pile of earnest savings, Mo quit school and rented half a shop on India Street in downtown Dar where he opened his first business CameraPix. The year was 1963, and soon after he met a young, elegant model named Dolly Khaki who he would marry.
As an ambitious freelancer, Mo looked for work beyond the regular, everyday portraits he had become a pro at. The search was far from futile. He soon got a contract with Visnews to capture the stories of Zanzibar from a visual perspective. The Archipelago was rife with uncertainty as revolutionary John Gideon Okello seized power from Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution.
Zanzibari authorities had closed down the airport and the only way to access Zanzibar was via Tanzania by dhow at a former slave port in Bagamoyo. Familiar with the port, Mo prepared for his journey and carried with two cameras, a borrowed film camera and his own stills camera. He documented everything from the departure of Americans and Europeans by boat to military training camps where Russians and Germans were present. Both were aired on Visnews however the latter made its way to the Soviet Union and the KGB picked his name off the camera sheet and arrested him.
For close to a month, despite having the necessary paperwork to grant him access to Zanzibar, 23-year-old Mo Amin was beaten senseless, tortured, and interrogated in Kilimamigu Prison. While he faced the mercilessness behind bars, outside the prison walls and beyond Zanzibar, Mo’s name was being applauded as Africa’s leading photojournalist – so much that President Nyerere had him deported back to Tanzania. It seemed that his time behind bars did more to fuel his desire to share stories of Africa.
By the time the 80s rolled in, Mo’s portfolio was crisp. He started working with the BBC and when news of a great famine in Ethiopia found its way to the newsroom, Mo was the cameraman assigned to visually capture the story. This was the moment that would define his career. The result wasn’t just a Live Aid concert but extended to an award – the British Academy Award for Best Actuality Coverage.
In 1991 he gave an exclusive coverage of the fall of Mengistu Haile Miriam. However, shortly after, caught off guard near an ammunition dump that exploded, Mo lost his left arm. But this too didn’t deter the man’s spirit. As part of his recovery Mo was fitted with a prosthetic hand that later became part of his identity. His work continued and so did his life.
But in November 1996 no one could have predicted that the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 scheduled to fly from Addis Ababa to Abidjan via Nairobi, Brazzaville, and Lagos respectively would be hijacked. Three Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia were among the 163 passengers on the flight, and so was Mo. The disruption led to an unexpected detour and the plane unavoidably exhausted its fuel mid-air, crashing into the Indian Ocean near the Comoros Islands.
A tragic end for a resolute worker, but Mo’s legacy still lives on and his work remains relevant to date. We salute our late serviceman, our photojournalist-businessman, our Paukwa Person, our #KePhotographer.
