I never cared much for sports involving men or women racing to reach a ball and then to get it through the net or into the goal. Sure, it requires concentration, skill, and very often, teamwork, but is that all there is to athleticism?. In sports where participants are racing against each other; it becomes a test of strength and endurance. Somehow, I find that much more meaningful. Nevertheless, these past few days, thanks to the FIFA World Cup, I now see sports rather differently. Sports, especially those involving a ball, attract rabid fans. I rarely see or, more importantly, HEAR, fans who cheer as wholeheartedly as those eying the ball. And that’s the point…

Images of African arenas by Thomas Hoeffgen.

I have never been to Ethiopia, and, before today, I never wanted to go at all. All that changed when I stumbled across Joey Lawrence’s Abyssinia series. Much has been covered of the nation in the media; the lingering image in my head is that of the 1985 famine: starving children with bloated stomachs and bony limbs, gaunt faces further made more harrowing with glazed blank eyes, emaciated cattle straying helplessly in search of food, parched land streaked with cracks and void of moisture. It looked to be a place I did not want to visit - ever! Yet, when I see these images, I become deeply fascinated - what life is and means for these people: simple, albeit tough. I very much doubt my ability to ever live like that - robbed of my precious digital technology and unabated addiction for constant connectivity and news - but it is a pictures like these that remind me what life probably was for my ancestors…

Naturally, I was wrong. Enter Ricardo Rangel.

Ricardo Rangel (b. Mozambique, 1924) photographs street scenes, landscapes, the everyday activities of individuals, and night scenes in the cafes and restaurants in Mozambique. His work testifies to his great involvement with the people of Mozambique’s multi-cultural society. The photographs are pervaded by compassion for those portrayed and fury at injustices. Rangel worked some time for various newspapers. In 1970, together with four other journalists, he established the illustrated weekly magazine Tempo. This was the first colour magazine in Mozambique. In 1981 he became director of the weekly Domingo, and three years later he was asked to set up the Centro de Formaçao Fotográfica in Maputo, a school for photography. He remains its director down to the present day.(Noorderlicht)

Sadly, Rangel passed away in early June. Speaking at Rangel’s funeral, in Maputo City Hall, Prime Minister Luisa Diogo praised Rangel for using his camera “to denounce colonial dictatorship”. She recalled that in the final years of the Portuguese colonial regime, Rangel had been harassed by the Portuguese secret police, the PIDE, and some of his photos had been banned. Much of his work from that period, Diogo noted, could only be published after independence in 1975. (AllAfrica)

“He was much more than a photographer”, Diogo said. “He used photography as a weapon against colonialism and foreign aggression”. The general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (SNJ), Eduardo Constantino, added that, in building the new Mozambique after independence, Rangel “condemned the new injustices, the deviations and the errors”, and “continued to fight for better quality in our journalism”. (AllAfrica)

It is such a shame that much of his old negatives, pre-Independence, were destroyed. From what I can tell of his work, they certainly capture views of Africa that I do not know. And I believe most of the world do not know of this side of Africa, as we are consistently fed by media portrayal which favour stock images of starving children with flies circling them and young boys with guns and rifles.