Tag Archives: Allister Sparks

For Allister Sparks

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In May 2015, I wrote “Apartheid: A Policy of Good Neighborliness” in defense of Allister Sparks, anti-apartheid journalist and author; and also to educate people about Hendrik Verwoerd, who was the architect of apartheid in South Africa. I was responding to an article on enca.com, that still falsely claims that Sparks “expressed his admiration”(their words, not his) for Hendrik Verwoerd in a speech. The original article included a video of his speech, which I watched several times to hear for myself what he said, but when I went to look at the article again recently, they took down the video and had edited the article.

Allister Sparks passed away on 19 September 2016, and because my post about him is the highest viewed here and people are still clicking on the link to the enca.com article, I am speaking up for him once again.

Here is a snippet from The Washington Post obituary, celebrating his courage and dedication to end apartheid. Rest in peace Allister.

[…]”Mr. Sparks wrote most recently for The Post in 2004, on the 10th anniversary of [Nelson] Mandela’s swearing-in as his country’s first black president.

“It was the most stirring moment of my life,” Mr. Sparks wrote. “For more than 40 years as a journalist in South Africa, I had written about the pain and injustices that apartheid inflicted on people. I had been harassed and threatened by a white regime that regarded me as a traitor for doing this, and here at last was a kind of vindication or triumph.

“It is a terrible thing to feel alienated from one’s own people,” he continued. “. . . I could not identify with the land of my birth because it stood for things I abhorred; I felt no sense of patriotism when I heard my national anthem or saw my national flag. But on that day in 1994, as I stood before a new flag, listening to a new anthem, watching a new president being sworn in, I felt, yes, my very first twinge of national pride.”

Apartheid: “A Policy of Good Neighborliness”

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Here are a few videos of Dr. Hendrick Verwoerd, who has been called the “Architect of apartheid” for the policies he put into practice during his time as Minister of Native Affairs and as Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa.

Recently, in a speech to the Democratic Alliance’s Federal Congress, Allister Sparks listed Verwoerd as one of the “really smart politicians” he had met in his 64 years as journalist in South Africa – but he also included his friend and colleague Helen Zille – an anti-apartheid activist and journalist, who put her life in danger to expose the cover-up of Steve Biko‘s death, calling her “the smartest political tactician of all.” I think the assumption by those upset with his inclusion of Verwoerd, is that they think he admires him personally, when he only called him “smart”. Verwoerd was smart, in that he knew how to manipulate public opinion for personal gain and to turn human rights backwards – when Dag Hammarskjold met with Verwoerd in January of 1961, Brian Urquhart wrote in his biography of him “He had felt that he had been speaking to Verwoerd across a gulf of three hundred years”. But to better understand why people are upset to even hear his name, you must hear Verwoerd in his own words.

“Our policy is one, which is called by an Afrikanns word “Apartheid”. And I’m afraid that has been misunderstood so often. It could just as easily, and, perhaps, much better be described as a policy of good neighborliness. Accepting that there are differences between people, and that while these differences exist, and you have to acknowledge them, at the same time you can live together, aide one another, but that can best be done when you act as good neighbors always do.”

“The Republic is the only sure and stable friend that the western nations have in Africa. We are here to stay, and we are here to aide all others in whatever they may need and can get from us. We have, for a very long time, developed in South Africa a nation of our own – friendly, prosperous, progressive. We hope that the rest of Africa will become likewise.[…] Of course there has been sensational journalism and conditioned reporting, which created the impression that there would be great difficulties ahead of us. We have no doubt at all this will pass. Certain restrictive measures had to be taken recently, mainly to insure to protection of the masses – of all races who seek peace and order. Therefore, a stable government will continue in South Africa.[…] Here the solution is sought by openly retaining the white man’s guiding hand; which elsewhere is the hidden guarantee of industrial development, and even good administration.”

In 1966, Hendrick Verwoerd was assassinated, stabbed in the chest and neck while at his desk in Parliament, but it wasn’t the first attempt made on his life. Six years earlier, at the Johannesburg agricultural show, he was shot in the head twice. This video shows that earlier attempt.

*Update found here.