Stanley Uys - the greatest of South African journalists, whose career stretched from 1943 until his final article on Politicsweb, "Will Zuma go?", on 16 December last year (an appropriate date for such a historically-grounded political analyst) - passed away in his home in London on Saturday 11 January, aged 91, peacefully doing a crossword with his wife, Sarchen. He had been working earlier the same day on a further article for Politicsweb.
We will not read his like again. For 70 years he lived, and died, in the craft.
Through his editing and writing together with a young James Myburgh of the blog ever-fasternews.com from 2005 to 2008, he was the founder of dedicated online political journalism with a focus on South Africa, and the step-father of Politicsweb, having previously been parliamentary correspondent, political editor and assistant editor of the Sunday Times for 28 years.
Before his "retirement" in 1985 at age 62, he had been associated with South African Associated Newspapers for 42 years, having taken up his position as London editor in January 1977.
Ruth First brought him secretly to interview Nelson Mandela in hiding in Wolfie Kodesh's tiny flat in Berea in Johannesburg in 1961, before Mandela's illegal trip to the PAFMECSA conference at Addis Ababa in January 1962. Three decades later, Mandela teased Stan when they met - in a very different political age - that really, Stan had not been very impressed by him....
He saw with his own eyes the assassination of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in Parliament in September 1966.