Contemporary Chess
In a game of chess there are two sides, one white, one black. While the white side starts first, and has the apparent advantage to a spectator, the game can change in a turn. Using the metaphor of chess on a global political stage it is not unheard of that the game can end in a draw, that all fighting will cease, and life will resume without war. In reality politics is not a game, it is much more.
What remains constant between the childhood game of chess and the field of politics is the ability to establish relationships between two or more sides. That relationship may be negative, neutral, or even positive, but it is still a connection.
Changing viewpoints, imagine sitting in the sun on the trunk of a fallen tree. You see two monkeys scurry past your legs when suddenly, they engage in apparent warlike behaviour. Upon closer inspection you realize that both monkeys are not fighting, but trying to groom the other.
Everywhere one looks in the Universe, “X” has a relation to “Y”. The Sun has a relation to the Moon. The Moon has a relation to the tides. And while these relationships may not fetch the same emotion as two humans playing a game of chess, or two monkeys trying to groom each other, the connection is apparent. It is an undeniable fact that humans like to be connected, whether it is through the latest mobile phones or via the latest computers, we are a species that thrives on communication.
In 1994 apartheid may have been overwritten in South Africa but it was not erased. In an article entitled Mandela’s Children, Fuller describes how overlying attitudes became engrained in belief structure of many who were alive during apartheid, quoting one prisoner’s reflecting on being told by another prisoner “until I stopped being a racist I’d be in two prisons – one around my body and another around my heart.” Acts of violence geared towards certain nationalities still continue within the twenty-first century and as Fuller states in the June Issue of National Geographic, “in May 2008 more than 60 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced in xenophobic riots targeting mainly Mozambicans and Zimbabweans,” proving a renewed sense of hatred that remains ever present.
This contemporary game of chess that, not necessarily differentiates between two ‘colours’, but between nationalities, is counter-productive to say the least. If history has taught us anything it is that difference is good, contributing to our world in various but positive ways. There was one sentence Fuller wrote that encapsulates the what South Africa gains from hosting the World Cup, that “their nation could now be remembered for bring the world soccer rather than apartheid”. Countries of the world playing in South Africa, celebrating with South Africa, and perhaps most importantly, connecting in South Africa will hopefully establish a new relation to the land and its people that will redefine what it means to come from South Africa.
