Albania Reflections Six (6) by Dr Lyndon Bouah

South Africa was however invited to the 1974 Olympiad in Nice, France. Raymond Keene and David Levy published a book called the Chess Olympiad Nice 1974. I shall quote extensively from this book as it provides context for the isolation South African chess experienced. The South African team was placed in the preliminary group number five. It was quite a field for the young South African team. South Africa played 8 matches, and their results were out of four, 1 against West Germany, a draw with Sweden 2-2, a win against Iceland 2.5, 0.5 against Portugal, a 2-2 draw with Ireland and then wins against Hong Kong, Guernsey, and Trinidad. Keene and Levy then published three games from the South African contingent.

South Africa was then placed in the Finals in Group C. At the same time the FIDE Chess Congress was about to start. South Africa played 12 matches and scored the following results: loss to Australia, draw with Brazil, loss to Mongolia, draw with Ireland, loss to Chile, loss to Indonesia, beat Mexico, beat Turkey, beat Singapore, loss to Venezuela, beat New Zealand and Ecuador. Great result for the team. Let’s have a look at the individual scores of the players before we go to the FIDE Congress decision.

The players played 13 games with Aarlbersberg playing 11. Interestingly Nigel Bloch scored 6 wins and seven draws and no losses to record a percentage of 73%! FIDE however decided to wipe all the results from the event where South Africa was concerned and hence the reason why I am not adding a table here.

Keene and Levy devotes three pages of their book to South Africa and Rhodesia. I quote from pages 174 to 176 “Gens Ne Una Sumus?

“Our abhorrence of the intrusion of politics into chess has been mentioned in both of our previous Olympiad books but the events that surrounded the exclusion of Rhodesia and South Africa from FIDE merit a place of its own. We feel that the actions of the FIDE Congress at Nice and those of the President, Dr. Euwe represents the biggest scandal the chess world has seen since Staunton refused to play a match against Morphy.

The Rhodesian team was beset with problems from the very start of the Olympiad. Their second board, Louis Fox, who had played at Siegen (travelling on an Israeli passport), had been assured by both the airline taking him to Nice and the Nice municipality (in a telex message) that he would have no problems entering France on a Rhodesian passport. When he arrived at Nice airport however, he was refused entry, and although the telex message was shown to the immigration officers all efforts failed to change the situation. After a four-hour wrangle, he gave up hope and flew to Tel Aviv. Two weeks later arrived at Nice airport, this time with Israeli documents, and was admitted to the country in time to play round four of the finals.

The worst was yet to come. At the FIDE Congress meeting in Helsinki (1973) the decision had been made to investigate whether the treatment of coloured chess players in Rhodesia and South Africa was in violation of the principles of FIDE. Dr Euwe went to both countries and prepared a report which was circulated at Nice. Nowhere in his report does he offer any evidence of discrimination against coloured players, neither does he even suggest that he feels either countries should be excluded from FIDE. One of us (RDK) toured South Africa during November 1973 and played simultaneously against White and Black opponents. At that time the Natal Open Championship in Durban had just been won by a coloured player called Holmes.

On the agenda of the Congress meetings at Nice was a proposal, introduced by the Moroccan chess federation, to exclude both countries. Their proposal was signed by the representatives of Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, USSR, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Argentina and Cuba.

From reading Dr Euwe’s report on page eight few have expected him to be completely opposed to this proposal and he is a powerful enough figure for his views to carry much weight with Congress. But there was another issue at stake. The office of President was open to re- election and opposing Dr Euwe was Vice President Rabell Mendez from Puerto Rico. At the start of the Olympiad, it was thought that Euwe was likely to lose the election as Mendez had the support of many of the smaller countries. But the Soviet Federation saw a way to use the situation to their advantage – they offered Euwe a deal whereby he would get the votes of the Eastern Bloc countries if he supported the exclusion of Rhodesia and South Africa. Euwe agreed.

As soon as the exclusion was announced South Africa withdrew from the Olympiad. Under FIDE rules, if a team withdraws from a FIDE competition after having played at least half of its games it’s score is not expunged from the records. But in the case of South Africa, the rule was not adhered to. South Africa’s score was deleted from all further official records.

The Rhodesian team decided to continue play but when they came to meet Algeria there was more trouble. A short while before the match was due to begin Dr. Euwe removed the players’ name cards from the tables. The referee immediately replaced them. Euwe then tried to tell Kotov, the chief Arbiter, that the Algerian team ‘cannot play’ (their apostrophes) against Rhodesia. ‘You mean they will not play’, said Kotov. Euwe then tried to argue that at Helsinki there had a secret agreement made by the Central Committee to the effect that if countries who were at war with each other were unable to play the result of their match would be determined based on the players’ Elo ratings. The decision had not been made public, nor has it been intimated to the referee at Nice. In fact, Kashdan was heard to protest most strongly that neither he nor any other arbiter that he knew was aware of the ‘secret rule’. One might also ask exactly when the war between Algeria and Rhodesia began. The conflagration seems to have escaped the notice of the worlds press.

In our opinion the whole question of politics in chess has been very badly handled by FIDE for far too long. Algeria should never have been allowed to compete at Nice, nor should Iraq who also refused to play Rhodesia nor Tunisia who would not play against Israel. As to the matter of the expulsion of South Africa and Rhodesia, we can only hope that this state of affairs is only temporary and that they will both be back in the lists at the next Olympiad. In retrospect it seems rather strange that Rhodesia’s FIDE delegate did not see fit to attend all the Congress meetings, there to plead his country’s case.. to be continued