Journalist and author Allister Sparks dies

VETERAN journalist, author and columnist Allister Sparks died yesterday at the Morningside MediClinic in Sandton at the age of 83.

Sparks, who previously wrote for The Mercury, had suffered a heart attack.

He achieved acclaim as the editor of the Rand Daily Mail and authored a number of books, including the internationally acclaimed Tomorrow is Another Country and his recently released memoirs, The Sword and the Pen.

He had been in hospital for 12 days after suffering an infection.

Sparks was the editor of the Rand Daily Mail when the paper uncovered “Muldergate”, otherwise known as the Information Scandal, which exposed the apartheid government’s propaganda war against the mainstream South African press.

Under Sparks’s editorship, the Mail exposed how The Citizen newspaper was established by the government to act as a counter voice of the Rand Daily Mail, an English newspaper influential in the formation of English public opinion.

A memorial is being planned for Friday, October 14 at 11am at the Braamfontein Crematorium. – Mercury Reporter