MARK RUBERY CHESS

The film ‘Cry Freedom’ made in 1987 and starring Denzil Washington will always be indelibly linked with the late Donald Woods (1933-2001). The internationally known former editor of the Daily Dispatch who befriended Steve Biko, was portrayed in the movie by Kevin Kline.

What, however, is less known was his affection for the game of chess. During the years when he was a ‘banned person’ he was not allowed to be in the same room with another person; thus chess games would take place with his opponent on the edge of the living room next to the kitchen, where Woods himself would be seated. This and more was revealed in his autobiography ‘Asking for trouble’. When South Africa was ejected from the 1974 chess Olympiad in Nice, Woods made an eloquent (if ultimately unsuccessful) speech to FIDE, emphasising the non-racial position of the SA Chess Federation. In 1975 the SA Closed (one of the stronger editions of this event) was played in East London where Woods was a frequent and observant visitor. He described the Champion David Friedgood as ‘exuding a quiet menace’ and on Pretoria’s Albert Ponelis ‘I expected a slim intellectual, instead he shaped up like a prop-forward’

Donald Woods’ last public chess appearance was in London when he took part in a simultaneous against Gary Kasparov.

Here is an attractive miniature from that 1975 SA Closed

De Villiers,Charles - Van Tets,Albert [C44]

RSA ch XXXIII East London, 1975 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.c3 dxc3 5.Bc4 c2 6.Qxc2 Bb4+ 7.Nc3 d6 8.0–0 Bxc3 9.bxc3 Nf6 10.e5 dxe5? (10…Nxe5 11 Nxe5 dxe5 12 Ba3 c5! is fine for Black) 11.Ba3! Be6 12.Bxe6 fxe6 13.Rad1 Nd7 14.Qb3 Kf7 15.Qxb7 Na5 16.Qa6 Kf6 (16… c6 17 Rxd7+!) 17.Qxa5 c6 18.Qa4 1–0

WHITE TO PLAY AND WIN

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time with a steady eye. – Winston Churchill