BORN in the Eastern Cape town of Cathcart and schooled at Queens College in Queenstown, Allister Sparks began his career in journalism at the town paper, The Representative.Daniel Francois Malan was prime minister when he started out in 1951. He would report on politics through the Verwoerd years, the police state of BJ Vorster and the violent tenure of PW Botha.Then, as foreign correspondent, he would write about and befriend Nelson Mandela, who would go on to describe him as “One of South Africa’s eminent journalists, whose outspoken views have served the cause of democracy in this country magnificently”.The quote was used on the cover of Sparks’ final work, his memoir entitled The Sword and the Pen.It is a monumental work which pays tribute to a monumental life lived in the cause of advancing freedom through courageous journalism.Sparks had a hand in almost every major story of the past five decades.His start at the Rand Daily Mail was inauspicious enough. When he arrived at the ...
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