[1] Sole was a boarding student at the South African College Schools (SACS) in Cape Town, where he acquired the nickname "Sam" from his English teacher.
He later said that he considered leaving the country but enlisted to confront both the "ugly realities" of apartheid-era South Africa and his "doubts about my own courage".
[2] He was a rifleman in the 6 South African Infantry Battalion in Grahamstown, which was deployed to nearby townships to quell ongoing civil unrest.
[3] During that time, in 1985, he wrote his first newspaper article, an account of police and military actions in the townships during the prevailing state of emergency; he submitted it to the End Conscription Campaign, which arranged for it to be printed anonymously on the front page of the International Herald Tribune.
[9] The model for the centre was inspired by the non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism and ProPublica, and in its first fiscal year it received two-thirds of its funding from M&G and the other third from the Open Society Foundation.
[16] On 29 November 2002, still in his first year at the M&G, Sole broke the story of an ongoing criminal investigation into Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who was suspected of soliciting bribes from contractors in the 1999 Arms Deal.
[32] He, Brümmer, and amaBhungane's Vinayak Bhardwaj won the 2013 Taco Kuiper Award for their investigation into state-sponsored upgrades at President Zuma's Nkandla residence.
Notably, in 2017 Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic recruited amaBhungane, and later News24, for a joint investigation of the so-called Gupta Leaks.
[37][38] Sole was also shortlisted separately for the 2017 Taco Kuiper Award for reporting with Susan Comrie on the involvement of McKinsey & Company in Gupta-linked public contracts.
[45][46] The disclosure confirmed longstanding suspicions; in 2009 the M&G had lodged an ineffectual complaint with the Inspector-General of Intelligence in connection with reliable reports that Sole and his colleagues, including M&G editor Ferial Haffajee, appeared on the spy tapes.
[48] Meanwhile, on the basis of the State Security Agency's disclosure, Sole and amaBhungane mounted a challenge to the constitutionality of RICA and of bulk surveillance conducted under its auspices.