Greg Marinovich Photographer
[email protected]
Feature
Chechnya & Boston: A Global Tragedy
Tweet As US authorities hunt the second of two young men, boys really, in and around Boston, I look at how and why two smart young kids are willing to kill strangers and die thousands of kilometres from the home in the former Soviet Republic of Chechnya. Chechnya hit world headlines in 1994 when the [...]
Incident in a Small Town
Tweet INCIDENT IN A SMALL TOWN When eighteen year old Norman ‘Herman’ Mokau and his friends walked from Meetsetshehla Secondary School in the western Limpopo town of Vaalwater on November 24th, 2011 and changed from their uniforms into street clothes, they were happy, upbeat and planning to get drunk. They had finished writing their last [...]
Behind the Commission at Marikana
Tweet Mzoxolo Magidiwana, on crutches, says police went around finishing off wounded miners. The Marikana Commission has finally begun to hear from the miners who were at the heart of the strike last year. Terrifying testimony from Mzoxolo Magidiwana who says police went around finishing off wounded miners at scene one. He [...]
Anger and Criminality
Tweet After two days of violent protests against plans to merge Sasolburg into the Ngwathe local municipality, Sasolburg’s black township, Zamdela, was quiet for a brief spell on Tuesday morning. The roads were littered with the burnt-out carcasses of trucks, bakkies, buses, and debris from concrete blocks to tree stumps. But when Cooperative Governance and [...]
Small Koppie Revisited
“It only says that he died of unnatural causes. Nothing more. We have many questions.”
Murder at Marikana
Tweet Greg Marinovich, Marikana. In a tumble of boulders quite near the hill called Wonderkop, yellow spray paint defaces the ancient granite. This is not graffiti, yet something far worse than vandalism took place here, at the spot locals dismissively refer to as Small Koppie. One rock, encompassed closely on all sides by [...]
Shall we define Blood Platinum, now?
It looks like war. It is a war. A war of survival, certainly for the miners, and perhaps for the future of Rustenburg’s platinum mines too.
The Lord’s Children
Burnt mud brick huts punctuated the tropical landscape and an eerie silence hangs over deserted homesteads. A flattened patch of tall grass is pointed out as the site of LRA killings.
Lies and Farm Implements
the knotted strands of grass that I took to indicate the presence of mines, or was it an absence of mines?
The Prison of Genocide, Rwanda 1995
Were they so sure of the extermination of their enemies that they thought they were safe from retribution?
Silver Halide Martyrs
“The longer you stay shooting a dead body, the longer somebody is bleeding, the longer you suffer.”
Let them eat Khat
My team of hired guns included a twelve year old boy in flip flops carrying a fifty caliber machine gun
Identity in the Suburbs, Jozi
Tweet Under shady trees, I pass close by a security gate. A deep-throated bark stirs my adrenal gland. A dog in a Springbok jersey, number 14. Boerboel, muscular, cut. Ray Mordt, I thought without hesitation. Overgrown sidewalk, man in sunglasses and lumber jacket walking towards me, his hands are in his pockets. As he nears [...]
Treacherous Currents
We toasted his death with Coca Cola before I pedaled off with a light heart and a heavy bike.
The Warm Heart Enraged
It’s clear that paraffin lamps and candles were the common currency of luma here.
South Sudan
Tweet A mix of quiet dignity and wild joy marked the days leading up to the establishment of the world’s newest country. Rising from the ashes of the continent’s longest running civil war – from 1955 until, well, actually, it is still kind of going on right now, despite an intermission and lots of paperwork [...]
When it turns sour
Tweet The tall lean man spoke around the breakfast he was chewing on, his blue eyes flicked at me, “Human barbeque, it smelt like human barbeque for a year down here,” said the bankrupt doctor in that distinct New York City argot of machine-gun staccato words with unpredictable cadence. I glanced accusingly at Leonie, who [...]
Let the Fellaheen Rise
“Inshallah, we will make it,” he uttered with his broad smile and a crazed glint in his one eye.
The Slippery Slope Appliance Militia
Tweet New Year resolutions. What a thing. But somehow the spirit has possessed me and one of the things I would like to fix is our impotence in the face of the disposable nature of much of today’s appliances and technology. My mother-in-law’s microwave is 23 years old, works perfectly. I enviously read online about [...]
A Christmas Murder
Tweet A Christmas Murder. The neighbour’s parrot has been teasing us for a couple of years now, calling out “Mama! Mama!” in a pretty passable imitation of our youngest offspring, and making us run to see what has befallen our daughter. Then, it started imitating the ring of the landline in the converted garage we [...]