GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Jacob Zuma’s 10-year chess game
The President is an insightful chess player, but even he has to concede that his current stalemate will be put into check soon enough
"If you play this game you are taught to calm down. The game teaches you strategies and tactics and allows your mind to function excellently and to be stretched to the last degree. This allows you to always anticipate the decisions and tactics of the opponent. This is how you avoid pitfalls." ~ President Jacob Zuma, on the game of chess. Jacob Zuma’s Presidency has always been a cold war between himself and those, inside and outside the ANC, that would see him defeated. In the end there was no final, bloody showdown, just as there was no battlefield, with clearly delineated boundaries that separated friend from foe. The ANC itself, the organisation, amorphous and abstract, was ground zero. And while, occasionally, you might stumble across a body in a dark corridor, slouched on the floor with a knife in its back, most of the violence was done with power. That requires some considerable skill. Towards the end of every year, the Jacob Zuma Foundation hosts the Annual Jacob Zuma Chess T...
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