Sunday, February 23, 2025

May 10, 2021

Ace Magashule’s Chess Game Mocked By Grandmaster Garry Kasparov

The suspended secretary-general posted a picture of himself in the midst of a chess battle, but it turned out to be a rather fitting metaphor for his political situation.

[imagesource: Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Alon Skuy]

It’s been a pretty average few weeks for suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule.

He’s seen the party, by and large, turn against him, and his ‘countersuspension’ of President Cyril Ramaphosa was a genuinely pathetic last-ditch attempt to try and cling to power.

Whilst Ace and his loyalists won’t go down without a fight, it appears that Ramaphosa and the party bigwigs are tired of his shenanigans.

The only media outlet that reckons Ace is in with a fighting chance is IOL, which long since lost credibility as Iqbal Survé continues to push the RET agenda for his own benefit.

On top of losing his battle within the ANC, Ace has also ended up being ridiculed for his (lack of) chess acumen, stemming from this photo shared last week on his official account:

Go on, take a closer look. Which piece is he holding, and where can he move from there?

That’s right, nowhere.

The jokes write themselves, and South Africans were quick to take the piss:

The humiliation didn’t stop there, with one South African asking chess grandmaster and former world champion Garry Kasparov for his take:

Kasparov replied, whilst apparently cry-laughing:

I like everything about this, other than the fact that a grandmaster uses emojis. We should all be better than this.

Use your words, people.

According to Business Insider SA, there is a possible plausible explanation for what’s happening on Ace’s board:

…Magashule was captured in the act of completing his second move – which would mean that, against the tradition of the game, black moved first.

That would not be entirely unheard of, even at the very highest levels of the game. In 2019, two champion players chose to have black move first, in what was described as an anti-racist statement.

I’m not buying it.

Ace has finally been backed into a corner, and we can only hope he’s now made to pay for what he did during his time as Free State premier.

[source:businsidersa]