Emeka Nwandiko
Forget about a rematch of boxing heavyweights Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield taking place on South African soil.
A far weightier contest takes place this week at the Old Edwardian Society in Houghton – a unification bout between the current Draughts World Champion and the world champion for morabaraba.
Ron King flew to South Africa from Barbados on Tuesday to defend his status as the undisputed draughts champion against local morabaraba champ Amos Mavusu.
To avoid talk of match-fixing and bad refereeing, the pair agreed to play each other in their respective disciplines.
And the reason for the bout?
“They wanted to play each other. Mavusu knows a little about draughts and King, the reigning draughts champ since 1992, wants to see what morabaraba is all about,” says fight organiser Colin Webster, the president of the South African War Games Union.
“They also want to promote the games among women,” says Webster.
The unification bout has been a long time in the coming. It is believed that Rameses III played draughts with the sun god in ancient Egypt, and archeologists are reported to have found a morabaraba board in a pyramid in Gizeh.
Morabaraba is largely played in the rural areas of Southern African with about 40% of the South Africans playing the game.
Like draughts, each player has 12 counters (in morabaraba they are called cows). But unlike draughts, where the opponent’s pieces are captured by hopping along diagonal spaces on the board, in morabaraba, pieces can only be captured when there are three cows in a row.
Both King and Mavusu are fast players. King holds the world record for beating 300 players simultaneously and hopes to extend that in South Africa to 500. Mavusu thinks several moves ahead of his opponent.
Match prediction: draw.