Johannesburg, South Africa
$150 - $450 / Day
Niren Tolsi is a multi-award-winning journalist based in South Africa. His areas of interest include Constitutional law, social justice, citizen mobilisation and the state's (often violent) responses to these. For the past five years Tolsi and photographer Paul Botes have been documenting the aftermath of the Marikana massacre, when South African police killed 34 striking Lonmin mine-workers in the North West province. They have been following the material and psychological effects of the massacre and the various narratives around the killing with all 44 families who lost loved ones during the strike. Tolsi is editor of the long-form and literary magazine, The Con. he is currently South African arts journalist of the year and the current Ruth First Fellow and Heinrich Boll Fellow.
The Con conducted a forensic investigation into collusion and price-fixing within South Africa's construction industry. This was followed by a social investigation onto the impact of the collusion on a Durban community suffering chrome-poisoning, pollution and inadequate healthcare. The investigative series transitioned into a multimedia exhibition at the Goethe Institute's gallery in Johannesburg
Produced for Mail & Guardian
Tolsi and photographer Paul Botes spent eight months tracking down the 38 families of the miners killed by police during a fatal 2012 strike at Marikana to find out who these men were and what the repercussions of the traumatic violence of the deaths meant for the families who were "ignored" and "criminalised" by the South African government.
Produced for Mail & Guardian
Continuing their "slow journalism" approach to Marikana, journalist Niren Tolsi & photojournalist Paul Botes published an extensive investigation into police murders of striking mineworkers, the prevailing socio-economic conditions that migrant labourers in Marikana endure & the lack of state oversight of Lonmin's non-fulfilment of its social & labour plans.
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