World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov is visiting South Africa!! Kasparov was the top rated player for 21 years. He will be playing some chess on the 12th November. Pres Zuma has recently launched the MOVES FOR LIFE Chess development programme. From the link:
Kasparov comes from Moscow to South Africa on 12 November to form a joint venture with Tshwane/Pretoria based chess educational project Moves for Life (MFL).
13th Chess World Champion, Garry Kasparov, has announced that he wishes to link his Kasparov Chess Foundation to MFL to take the successful MFL formula to other African countries.
He has added that he plans to work with MFL to make Johannesburg the chess capital of Africa
Kasparov stated:. “I was greatly inspired by the words of President Zuma last October, when he spoke so movingly on the many benefits of chess for children – and of his remarkable connection to my beloved game. I am happy to join him and the South African Moves for Life programme in a commitment to bringing chess to schools across the country and for turning Johannesburg into the continental capital for chess.”
Kasparov will be visiting South Africa as the guest of MFL from the 12th – 15th November to promote the Kasparov Chess Foundation link up with the Moves for Life programme.
The Moves for Life programme was launched by President Zuma last year and has since expanded to over 50 schools around the country, resulting in measurable improvement in maths and science performance amongst children
Watu Kobese, Moves for Life trustee and one of South Afriva’s top chess players Operations says: “The game of chess impacts positively on Maths, Science and comprehension abilities while also imparting valuable life skills to children. In learning to play chess, children are mastering a wide range of skills such as pattern recognition, classifying information, reasoning by analogy, following principles, calculating possible sequences of events and critical thinking — which in fact helps with all their academic subjects,”
President Jacob Zuma, is clear that there is a place for chess in South Africa’s education system. When President Zuma launched the MFL initiative in 2010, he highlighted the benefits of chess saying, “We want to convince parents and teachers that chess is one of the most powerful tools available to strengthen and enhance a child’s mind.”
Moves for Life is now training over 6000 children per week and has trained more than 200 educators in 2011 both to teach chess in schools and also as an extra-curricular activity.. According to Kasparov, “The Moves for Life programme is already doing a wonderful job and we expect to cooperate and aid them in developing both their chess and sponsorship efforts. To promote our activities, chess in the media, and to inspire the grassroots, I will personally donate my time, to train South Africa’s most promising young players as well as the country’s elite teams, as I have done in the United States with great success.
The mission of the Kasparov Chess Foundation: Africa will be to bring the many educational benefits of chess to children throughout Africa by providing a complete chess curriculum with associated enrichment programs. The foundation promotes the playing of chess as a cognitive learning tool in classes and in after-school programmes for primary and high schools. The Moves for Life programme has both the South African experience as well as the material developed uniquely for the African situation. Through collaboration both KCF and MFL will be able to optimise all available resources and reach their respective goals.
“Chess is an individual sport, but promoting chess is not. With your support, Johannesburg will take a prominent place alongside New York, Brussels and Sao Paulo,” says Kasparov.
In June this year the Kasparov Chess Foundation launched its European leg, based in Brussels. The Foundation has ambitious plans to develop a programme for the entire European Union. On September 20th, the Kasparov Chess Foundation Europe presented its proposal at the Headquarters of the European Union.
Update: Saturday 12/11/2011
Was really disappointed when reading on CHESSA’s site about MFL, Kasparov, etc. I agree, MFL is a PRIVATE company and HERE is Dr Kemm, one of the 5 trustees of MFL and hopefully he will do something to get CHESSA also involved in this important visit – a visit our Chess players look forward to. This is a visit that happens only ONCE in a life time and Chess South Africa is not even fully involved! MFL: You CAN do something about it.
Update [again] – Saturday 19/11/2011
If you are interested to read Mickey’s reaction as a MFL-trustee – you can read his comments in the comments box. It’s sad to know that MFL actually contacted CHESSA and that CHESSA asked MFL to cancel Kasparov’s visit. I think CHESSA needs to ‘grow up’ and show that they are there for the Chess community in South Africa and that they are serious about developing Chess in South Africa. CHESSA’s article is misleading the general public about their role in Kasparov’s visit. CHESSA is obviously not thinking about their international image.
Chessalee 
Kasparov was the last person to become World Champion before computer programs became powerful enough to defeat grandmasters. So in a way, he was the last human world champion.
http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/may11/story_3.html
Hi Dan
Yes, Deep Blue was the Chess ‘Machine’ by IBM – you can read Anand’s comments
Kasparov:
http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/meet/html/d.1.html
Hi Nikita
I am a trustee of Moves for Life and my name appears in the letter on the CHESSA website. I am however responding in my own personal capacity and not as an MFL trustee.
Yes, you are correct, it is disappointing as a great opportunity has been missed by chess administrators for the benefit of chess players in South Africa. The visit by GM Garry Kasparov was however a great success and it is impossible to place a value on the exposure that chess recieved during the past couple of days. We have received radio, TV, and print media coverage, both domestically and internationally, that is probably worth hundreds of thousands of Rands, and highly beneficial for chess in SA. Much more could have however been achieved if all parties co-operated.
I believe it necessary to respond to you as you have now yourself fallen victim to the disinformation published on the CHESSA website. The MFL trustees have decided to make a deliberate attempt to not get involved in any public debate with CHESSA. This is neither in the interests of MFL nor in the interests of chess in general.
Your call for MFL “to do something about ot” in your article justifies the MFL standpoint. Nobody can win a public debate when there is doubt as to who speaks the truth and who does not. And after all is said and done it is only chess that loses and suffers from a fruitless public debate carried out in this vein.
Would you have made the same call if you had knowledge of the opposite side of the story. I will give two examples for you to ponder.
1. MFL was informed on 1 Sept 2010 that President Jacob Zuma would be able to join us for the MFL Launch dinner on 24 Oct 2010. MFL had a meeting with CHESSA CEO the next week to discuss how best both parties could benefit from the event. MFL, at own expense, travelled to Cape Town on 15 Sept to jointly plan the event with the leadership of CHESSA. (The paper trail to prove this exists). The statements made on the CHESSA website, claiming that we provided no notification and no cooperation, are therefore extremely unfair towards the actual efforts of MFL. The same is true for the Kasparov visit. As soon as the visit was secured CHESSA was informed and invited to participate. CHESSA notified us that they would not participate. In fact, late in the day, CHESSA even instructed us to cancel the visit of GM Kasparov.
2. MFL never offered to arrange any meetings with any ministers. We invited CHESSA to use the opportunity to arrange a meeting with the Minister of Sport.(The paper trail exists).
There are further gross inaccuracies in the CHESSA statement. MFL has made a conscience decision to not enter into a “they said we said ding dong match”. MFL has much more important things to do, and part of our success has been to focus on positives and to spend our time impacting on the maths, science and life skills performance of SA’s children.
In 2011:
MFL trained more than 200 teachers how to teach chess. Those teachers are now teaching chess to more than 7000 children on a weekly basis.
MFL raised more than R2m for chess development. Most of the funds have been spent on development. A regulated portion has been spent on events such as a Presidential dinner, development tournaments, the Kasparov visit and PR.
The exposure created for chess and the benefits of chess through MFL activities has been unprecidented.
MFL have created partnerships with a number of national and international entities that will assist our effors. These include the SA Air Force, a number of large Science Centres around the country, the David MacEnulty Foundation and now the Kasparov Chess Foundation.
I trust you will accept my response in the constructive spirit that it has been written. I will however refrain from any further input for obvious reasons.
Please join our facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Moves-for-Life/156702274348031
We will publish all our good news stories here.
Regards
Mickey Scheepers
Hi Mickey
Thank you for your response. As I’ve said to you on chess.com too: CHESSA is – in my eyes – ‘incapable’ to do things. I’ve had my share of ‘experience’ with them and ‘once upon a time’ whilst everything was ‘still in place’, I could predict what the ‘way forward’ for chess in South AFrica would be if you have an ‘attitude‘. You have my sympathy – and empathy. I’ve seen and experienced that ‘attitude’ during small meetings as a chess teacher and even via emails when I wanted to blog chess tournaments played in South Africa. I will update my entry and do believe what you say. It’s very SAD as there is – with people like you – so much potential for chess in South Africa. I think I should join ‘forces’ with you. – I have already joined the FB-group – last night. Thank you for the link.
http://www.highveld.co.za/multimedia/video/VideoWatch.asp?VideoID=615 on this link you can see Kasparov playing a HUMAN game in South Africa
nikita, I need to your address please – emailed at norrbu[@g]mail.com
ASAP.
Hi Norrbu
Sent! 🙂