Greg Marinovich Photographer
greg@gregmarinovich.com
Social Commentary
soccer soccer soccer, oh Africa
“Hey Mister!” I ignored him. I have learnt it is best to ignore the police, usually. “Hey Mister, is this your car?” as I opened the door. Busted. “Yes.” “These, these flags, you must change them,” he pointed to the little South African flags ‘gloves’ adorning the wing mirrors. I stared blankly at him, were [...]
What really happens behind the khaki curtain ….
I have to admit to a startling and disturbing memory that overtook me as I was driving towards Ventersdorp to watch Eugene Terre’blanche be buried. Thousands of his sad and angry supporters were also driving to that little North West (formerly Western Transvaal) town to bid their white power icon adieu, after he was murdered [...]
Sharpeville protests 2010
Sharpeville. If one word epitomises the history of the South African people’s struggle against malign power, then it is the name of this small township south of Johannesburg. It was in 1960, on March 21, that white police officers opened fire with sten guns on an unarmed crowd of some 5,000 black protesters who were [...]
Heavenly day
I must admit, I was nervous about going to Nigeria. It seemed akin to going into the lair of the beast. I had seen District 9, after all, and have ventured through Little Nigeria – Hillbrow – of a night. Was I, too, about to become cat food? Nah, I told myself as I waited [...]
A Minor Inconvenience
Of course I had forgotten about Angola’s farewell sting. At the airport, once safely past immigration, security and the shops, the “Financial Police” gather at enclosed cubicles for the final shakedown. “How much dollars you have?” “Not much…” I said, fanning the notes in my wallet. The policeman nodded intensely, eyes fixed on my wallet, [...]
The Miracle
I was having an unusual breakfast of spaghetti and meatballs at my hotel in Accra, Ghana, gulping desperately at the fourth or fifth cup of weak coffee when I noticed that the entire kitchen and wait staff were riveted to the television set. Instead of the usual CNN or soccer on the massive flat screen, [...]
Nat Nakasa award
My colleagues in the SA Editors’ Forum honoured me this past weekend with the Nat Nakasa Award for courageous journalism, in balmy Durban. A lifetime achievement award, it is great to be recognised in this way. Trick is to ensure I keep up working in unusual places; as at just 46, I would hate to [...]
Shame and anger
Stuck in traffic on a downtown Johannesburg street, while giving our kids’ nanny a lift back to her apartment, a shadowy figure filled my window. I turned to look and there was a youngish man, thin, wearing a blue windcheater and his face covered with lesions. He has The Sickness, I thought, as I began [...]
FENCE JUMPERS
Fence-Jumping, Zimbabwe’s new national sport. Bumping along a sandy track in the pre-dawn gloom, sleepy boredom turns to excitement as security guard Pappi Molefe hisses “Illegals!” from the open back of the Landcruiser and turns on his failing torch to reveal two frightened young men huddled under Mopane bushes. Isaac and Nathan, in their twenties, [...]
UNWELCOME GUESTS
While in downtown Johannesburg to photograph the thousands of Zimbabwean refugees who seek shelter at the Central Methodist Church, I encountered an obstacle. My pen refused to write. It just so happened that the journalist with me had the same problem. The journalist’s idea was to gauge the feelings of those who had fled [...]
Dusty fields for maize, soccer and graves
It was a tough soccer match. Tackles made with scant regard for their bare feet or the legs they connected with. The dusty, rough pitch made falling both painful and dirty. Not that they seemed to mind or even notice, those bloody-minded little tykes. And the fact that the one team was 6-0 up did [...]
Windy days
The Marinovich’s opened their Congo exhibition at Bell-Roberts gallery in Cape Town last weekend. That Cape wind was blasting away. Open til mid-Jan. See my cell-phone movie here ….. prospects-opening52
Let injustice flourish
A great man lives in South Africa’s largest informal settlement, Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg. He was an activist in the ‘Eighties, during a particularly difficult time to be black and outspoken. The Apartheid state rewarded him with two years in police detention and left him for dead in the veld at the side of [...]
What our democracy means to me
Opinion - Jeff Mpondozenyathi One balmy September evening, I sat at the boarding gate waiting for my flight out of Frankfurt to Johannesburg. The waiting seemed to last forever, not because I was eager to get home but due to the acute embarrassment of watching South African youths behaving like hooligans. They were drunk, loud [...]
Honey-trucks and who to vote for
I had been assured that the African National Congress breakaway would be having a meeting in the tiny dorp of Winburg Saturday. So I was thrilled to discover, some four hours from home, that it had been postponed ’til next week in some other little Free State town. Oh joy. The rains we of the [...]
A grass-eye view of the elephants
The war for the heart and soul of the African National Congress continues to be a bitter hidden series of political battles. One insider told me “The blood is knee deep in meetings.” For me, it all began with the televised firing of South African deputy president Jacob Zuma three years ago for bribery taints. [...]