Niren Tolsi is a South African freelance journalist and co-founding editor of The Con, an online literary and long-form publication produced in Johannesburg. (He worked for the Mail and Guardian for years). He believes journalism is always in need of a defibrillator.

His areas of interest include citizen mobilisation and protest, state violence, constitutional law, social justice, arts and football. His work has been published by various South African and international media, among them Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, Chimurenga Chronic, The Guardian, The New York Times and Al Jazeera.

He has been working on a longterm “slow journalism” project with photographer Paul Botes which follows the aftermath of the 2012 Marikana massacre in South Africa.

In 2016 and 2017 Niren Tolsi was the Accounting for Basic Services Journalism Fellow a project of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Afesis-corplan, the Built Environment Support Group, Planact and the Isandla Institute, with support from the European Union.