Allister Sparks, prominent South African journalist, dies

JOHANNESBURG – Allister Sparks, a South African journalist and commentator who documented injustices under white minority rule as well as South Africa’s evolution as a multiracial democracy, has died at the age of 83.

Michael Sparks, a son of the veteran reporter, said his father died on Monday after an illness.

Allister Sparks was editor of the now-defunct Rand Daily Mail in the late 1970s when it exposed a clandestine plan by the apartheid government to use state resources for a propaganda campaign. The scandal eventually led to the resignation of Prime Minister John Vorster.

Sparks launched his sixth book — “The Sword and the Pen” — on March 10, his birthday. The book chronicles his 64 years of journalism, covering South Africa from the early years of apartheid.