Sparks was born on 10 March 1933 in Cathcart in the now-Eastern Cape. After completing his schooling at Queens College in Queenstown, the town served as the staging ground for Sparks’ first job in journalism in 1951, at The Queenstown Daily Representative newspaper.

It was during his time at the Rand Daily Mail, later becoming the publication’s editor, that Sparks gained prominence. 

During his time as a reporter and editor at the publication, it broke the Muldergate information scandal, published Spark’s interviews with freedom fighters Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe after the pair’s escape from jail and flight to Botswana, and broke the story of activist Steve Biko’s murder at the hands of the apartheid security services, among many others covered by the Mail.

His period at the Rand Daily Mail was split by an editorship of the Sunday Express and winning a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard in the United States.

After Sparks parted ways with the Rand Daily Mail, he worked as a South African correspondent for a number of publications, including The Observer, The Economist and The Washington Post. In the 1990s, Sparks reported on the meetings between whites and the ANC in exile and got to know South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela.

It was a visit and interview of Mandela at Spark’s home that led to The Secret Revolution long-form piece published in the New Yorker. 

Sparks would later become a columnist for the Business Day newspaper, where he was highly critical of how the post-apartheid government had become victim to corruption of President Jacob Zuma’s leadership.

Apart from his work as a journalist and editor, Sparks wrote several works, including Tomorrow is Another Country, The Mind of South Africa, and his memoirs, published on his birthday this year, The Sword and the Pen.

Business Day editor, Tim Cohen, said following Sparks’ death; “Allister Sparks has for as long as I can remember been a grand institution of South African journalism as an editor, as a commentator, and as an author. Sometimes controversial but always reasoned, he captured the best of the liberal voice in South Africa as a torchbearer for integrity and humanity. We will miss him terribly as a columnist at Business Day, and South Africa will miss the straight-from-the-heart missives that helped, in their own incremental way, to build a new country.”

Sparks was reportedly surrounded by his four sons, Michael, Simon, Andrew, and Julian, at the time of his death. His last column for the Business Day was published on Wednesday, 31 August.

media update extends its condolences to Sparks’ friends and family.

*Image courtesy of M&G