Obituary
TIM COHEN: Sparks was driven to breach walls between countrymen
Allister Sparks’s legacy holds out hope that, at root, humanity recognises itself in the end
ALLISTER Sparks had a mighty journalistic career spanning 66 years, but his core insight about SA was forged as a 19-year-old reporter interviewing the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, in a Queenstown hotel room and it remained unchanged until he died on Monday.In his recently published biography, The Sword and the Pen, he relates the extraordinary story of how it happened that a teenager came to interview Verwoerd, then a little-known politician, and how Verwoerd laid out his then astounding plan for the country.The plan involved something unknown at the time called "separate development", which was then not even official policy of the National Party (NP).Sparks relates how he was "baffled" by the idea and indicates he was sceptical about whether it could possibly work.Verwoerd told him, "There won’t be peace in this country, my boy, until the black man has his own countries.""What could he be talking about," Sparks writes. "How on earth could black people ‘have their own ...
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