Dr Franklin Abraham Sonn was born in October 1939 in Vosburg in the Karoo, Northern Cape and raised in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. Dr Sonn graduated from the University of the Western Cape and began his career as an educator.
He became the principal of Spes Bona High School in Athlone, Cape Town. Later, he became the President of the Cape Teachers’ Professional Association before he was appointed, in 1977, Rector of the then Peninsula Technikon in Cape Town, a post he held until his diplomatic posting. Peninsula Technikon is now part of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
Dr Sonn was an anti-apartheid campaigner and a champion of broad-based economic empowerment, who exercised his vision for a just South Africa as a board member in significant corporate businesses and as a co-founder of large black-owned enterprises. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr Sonn served on the boards of major companies, including ABSA, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), and Pioneer Foods.
He was the Chancellor at the University of the Free State (UFS). Dr Sonn held this office from 2002 and retired as Chancellor of the UFS on 31 December 2009.
He held 12 honorary doctorates and received the National Order, Counsellor of the Baobab Silver in 2008, from former President Thabo Mbeki.
He monitored Zambia's general election in 1992, as part of Jimmy Carter's team, and ran for the African National Congress (ANC) in the Western Cape during South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.
Dr Sonn was also a patron of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival and was a trustee of the Desmond Tutu Freedom Trust.
He spent three years as South Africa's first ambassador to the United States of America (USA) after President Nelson Mandela appointed him in 1995 until 1998.
Dr Sonn was married to Joan Heather Gelderbloem. They have two children.
Dr Franklin Abraham Sonn passed away on 15 November 2025 in Cape Town, Western Cape.
