Maputo — Artur Torohat, the official photographer of Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, died of meningitis in a South African hospital on Monday morning.

A source in President Chissano's office told AIM that Torohat had been hospitalised in South Africa for the past three weeks.

Torohat was a veteran of the national liberation struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. Most of the best-known photos of Frelimo guerrillas during the war were taken by just two people, and Torohat was one of them. The other was Daniel Maquinasse who died in the plane crash that killed President Samora Machel at Mbuzini in 1986. With Torohat's death, another link with the heroic days of the independence war snaps.

Torohat was Machel's official photographer from independence in 1975 up to the President's death, and subsequently performed the same job for Chissano.

Torohat was a founding member of the Mozambican Journalists Union (SNJ), and the SNJ general secretary, Hilario Matusse, described his death as "a great loss". He pointed out that it was Torohat who had been the living archive of imagery of the liberation war.

Torohat leaves a widow and eight children.