SANDS: Nelson Mandela at the chessboard: A prisoner’s solace
By David R. Sands
The Washington Times
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
It’s only a footnote to his monumental legacy, but there’s a chess angle to the story of the life of Nelson Mandela, the great South African leader who passed away last week at the age of 95.
It turns out that Mandela often turned to chess and checkers to pass the time during his more than 27 years as a political prisoner for his struggles to end racial apartheid in his homeland. Fellow detainees at the country’s notorious Robben Island prison, according to interviews reprinted in Chessbase.com, recall Mandela as a fierce competitor who, fittingly, played deliberately and favored a strategy of “attrition” to wear down opponents.
“He would take his time with every move, he would consider it very carefully,” recalled Neville Anderson, a fellow detainee who crossed swords many a time with Mandela over the board in the 1960s and 1970s. “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.”
South African President Jacob Zuma, a credible player himself, recalled the way Mandela and other detainees had to improvise to obtain the “solace” that came with playing chess.
“Many comrades made chess sets out of soap and driftwood that allowed us to continue to play this noble and great game,” Zuma said at the opening ceremonies for a chess tournament in South Africa this summer. “We improvised makeshift chessboards and we enjoyed the fullness of the game.”
With the chess boom now having conquered much of Asia, many see sub-Saharan Africa as the next big frontier for the game. IM Kenny Solomon has obtained all the necessary norms and needs only to get his FIDE rating about 2500 to become South Africa’s first grandmaster. A former national champion and frequent member of the South African Olympiad team, the 34-year-old Solomon’s talent is evident in this hard-fought win over Turkish expert Fahri Ercan from a 2009 tournament in Gibraltar.
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Great man.