The Mind of South Africa

Allister Haddon Sparks was born in Cathcart, South Africa on March 10, 1933. After graduating from Queen's College in Queenstown, he was hired by the newspaper The Queenstown Daily Representative. He eventually joined The Rand Daily Mail as a political correspondent and columnist. He became an assistant editor there in 1967, an editor of The show more Sunday Express in 1974, and then editor of The Rand Daily Mail in 1977. While there, he challenged apartheid and exposed a covert propaganda campaign by the government, which led to the resignation of President John Vorster in 1979. Sparks was fired in 1981. He became a foreign correspondent in South Africa for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Observer in Britain. He wrote six books during his lifetime including The Mind of South Africa, Tomorrow Is Another Country, and The Sword and the Pen. He died from heart failure after an infection on September 19, 2016 at the age of 83. (Bowker Author Biography) show less