THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW
MEET Gilbert Magabotse, a South African sporting hero. His face may not be as familiar to you as that of Olympic marathon gold medallist Josiah Thugwane, and he has not been invited to tea with Nelson Mandela, but here is the country’s latest world champion.
The reason you might not have heard about Magabotse is not just that he’s a rather shy chap who is somewhat bemused by the kind of publicity I’m about to shower on him, but rather because his sport is an indigenous game which is only slowly emerging from decades in the shadows of Western-dominated cultures.
Magabotse, who lives in Mandela Village, Mamelodi, is a champion morabaraba player. He took on the world’s best (actually, only players from Southern African states participated) at a championship hosted by the International War Games Federation earlier this year, and walked off with the trophy.
Now I know some of you out there are saying moraba-what? No, it is not an erotic Latin American-style dance. Morabaraba is a tactical board game, involving cunning and mental agility, which is played widely among rural African communities – sort of a cross between draughts and speed chess.
In a week when temperamental chess master Garry Kasparov was reduced to a whining wreck by IBM’s inexplicably named supercomputer Deep Blue, Magabotse took time out from his day job as a train cleaner to share his love of morabaraba with me. This is clearly no sporting prima donna. “I wouldn’t want to play it against a computer,” he says. ” You can’t see the eyes, and I like to see the eyes of my opponent when we play.”
We are sitting in the head honcho’s office of Spoornet’s luxury Blue Train division, across the road from the Pretoria jail. News that the press is finally honouring internal talent has sent a frisson of excitment around the complex.
The buxom receptionist literally quivered as she called Magabotse. “Oooh, nothing like this has ever happened here before,” she gushed. “I think my boss wants to have his photo taken with Gilbert for the paper.” Thankfully this was never formally requested.
Because Magabotse (34) only speaks North Sotho and Afrikaans (neither of which falls into my language memory bank), our conversation takes place with the aid of a third party. Hopefully not too much is lost in translation.
This unlikely sporting hero hails from a rural farming district called Madibaneng in Northern Province. The third of five children, he started looking after his family’s cattle and goats as a young boy, spending most of his waking hours in the bushveld with other herd boys.
“When we got bored we would draw a board in the ground or on a large rock, then use small bits of stone as pieces and play,” he explains. The boys were usually taught this intricate game by herdsmen who had themselves learnt as youngsters.
At first he considered himself an average player, but soon he was beating even the skilled elders. By the end of his nine-year stint herding cattle, Magabotse was regarded as a formidable opponent in his district. But it was only after moving to Pretoria that he began to take the game seriously, entering a local competition in 1994. He won R200.
Of the six major competitions he has so far entered, including representing his country in Zimbabwe, he has lost only one. “I love this game because it gives me sense,” he says without irony. “It makes me think. I can’t just play, I have to think out a strategy.”
It’s addictive. “If it was up to me I would play a competition every week.” At the moment he settles for practice every day during lunch breaks and trying to teach white colleagues.
Playing has given him tremendous confidence: “I beat most people because I’m able to think quickly. I do take a good time to think when my opponent is making his move, so by the time he has I’ve already worked out what I’m going to do.” He also calculates what the opponent will do afterwards, “so I’m really playing both sides of the board”.
The board consists of a series of three squares, one inside the other, with junctions at the corners and the centre of each side which are linked together. Each player has 12 “cows” which are tokens, usually bottle tops or pebbles.
Morabaraba’s rules appear simple to learn: each player takes turns to place a “cow” on a junction until they have created a line of three in a row, enabling them to shoot one of their opponent’s “cows”. The game is over when a player cannot move, or has lost all but two of his pieces.
Although it is being hailed as a local sport, little is known about morabaraba’s history. It is definitely an ancient African game, but where it originated is in dispute. Some say it was not in South Africa but in Egypt. Rameses III played draughts, but there is no information that he played morabaraba. Archeologists did, however, find a board in an Egyptian tomb which looks pretty similar to that used today.
In South Africa the game has a strong pastoral influence and was probably used to teach herd boys how to protect their cattle from raids.
Magabotse, who is married with three children, believes it should become a recognised national sport. “Many people see it being played but don’t take it seriously, they are dismissive and don’t realise just how skillful it is.”
I suggest this might have something to do with the fact that players are predominantly black. “I suppose you have a point,” he replies. “For so long anything with African roots was regarded as second- rate, but that’s all changing now.”
It is not known how many South Africans play morabaraba on a recreational basis, but it is believed to be many millions, and clubs are sprouting up all over. “It is something traditionally South African we can be proud of, but we need to get funding from the government to breathe life into it.”
The South African War Games Union – which looks after tactical or strategic computer and board games – shares his sentiment. It has taken morabaraba, and other traditional games, under its protective umbrella to promote them in schools and urban communities. There has already been some success in shedding the image of it as a game for boys and old men whiling away the time under shady trees.
Regular championships are now being held in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Northern Province and the Free State. Many top politicians are also keen players: the first Mpumalanga morabaraba championship, held in Nelspruit last year, saw Premier Mathews Phosa participate.
With new clubs springing up in Britain, France and Thailand, the game is also beginning to develop an international following. The union is planning to send a national team to play in England later this year, and eagerly anticipates a time when a world championship will have truly international participants.
But it is in Southern Africa that its strength lies, thanks to migrant labourers. Colin Webster, the union’s president, says the game is unstoppable: “It has been sidelined too long, but we can redress the wrong by crediting previously disadvantaged people for their excellence, allowing them to reach national prominence in a game which they already play.”
Webster, who is compiling an anthology on morabaraba, says it has cultural roots tied to the African concept of ubuntu: “While Western philosophy is based on the principle, `I think therefore I am’, ubuntu says `I am because you are’. So while most Western games are based on beating the opponent, morabaraba is about giving your opponent space to move in order to win.”
Magabotse sniffs on hearing this. Ubuntu does not enter his head when playing. “I’m in it to win. It’s like a battlefield … You have to ambush him with your attacking piece.” He likens this to machine-gunning the opponent – not very ubuntu-like at all.
But Webster claims the built-in concept of helping the opponent (sounds more like trapping to me) means that white players initially become very lost, because they are out to win and find it frustrating. “I had a chess master from Russia who looked at the game and said, `This is easy.’ He was demolished by a 14-year-old.”