Nelson Mandela and Chess by John Carlin

Nelson Mandela and Chess

Below is an interview with Neville Alexander, who was interviewed by John Carlin.

Chess. Mandela played chess. Tell me about how Mandela played chess while in prison.

Well, chess and draughts were the two games which were the oldest on the island in a way. Draughts partly because we could play them without a board. Chess, eventually, when we did get a board. It became a favorite game, and he was one of those who knew the game quite well. My personal recollection is that in both draughts and chess Nelson’s attitude was that of really attrition. That was his stance. He would take his time with every move, he would consider it very carefully. He would sort of mislead the other person by pointing things, this way, that way, the other and then making the move that wasn’t expected and so on. But more than that, when he did make a really good move, then he would really crow and make the other person feel really small.

I recall this particularly because of our late comrade, Don Davis, who eventually also joined the ANC incidentally. Don Davis used to think he was a really good draughts player, and Nelson and Andrew Mlangeni were his only two rivals … He normally beat Nelson, but he tended not to beat Mlangeni. Mlangeni was very good. But the point is that Nelson would … torture Don, that Don would sometimes just throw the board in the air, with pieces flying all over the place, getting really irritated. But [Mandela] had that way of, as I say, it was a war of attrition, and he tended therefore to be victorious in most cases.

He was excruciatingly slow in getting around to making his moves …

Ja, it was deliberate you see. This is a point that with Nelson, again, you can’t always be 100% sure, but it was largely deliberate because he knew that psychologically he was getting at the other person.

This was sent in by Chess Dad S. Berman originally from South Africa