The History Department, African Studies Center and MSU Press is hosting Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, author and filmmaker Greg Marinovich as part of the Global Year of Africa on April 18 at the MSU Union, Mosaic Room. The event is from 3 to 5 p.m.
Marinovich, who teaches visual journalism at Boston University and Harvard University, will discuss his book "Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of South Africa’s Marikana Massacre."
"Murder at Small Koppie" delves into the truth behind the massacre that killed thirty-four coal miners and wounded seventy-eight more in August of 2012 at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa’s North West province.
News footage of the event caused global outrage; however, it captured only a dozen or so of the dead. Marinovich's investigation has been called the most important piece of journalism in post-apartheid South Africa.
Marinovich focuses on the violence that took place at Small Koppie, a collection of boulders where a second massacre took place off-camera and in cold blood. Combining his own meticulous research, eyewitness accounts and the findings of the Marikana Commission of Inquiry, "Murder at Small Koppie" provides a vivid account of the tragedy and the events leading up to it.
By taking readers into the mines, the shacks where the miners live and the boardroom, Marinovich puts names, faces and stories to Marikana’s victims and perpetrators. He addresses the big questions that any nation must ask when justice and equality are subverted by conflicts around class, race, money and power, as well as the subsequent denial and finger-pointing that characterized the response of the mine owner, police and government.
"Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of South Africa's Marikana Massacre" is available for sale from Michigan State University Press through the website msupress.org and at bookstores.
