The Durban Chess Club was founded in 1893, making it one of the oldest chess clubs in South Africa. Here is an article written by Mervyn Millar that appeared in March 1974.

It is interesting to consider which Durban champions also became South African champions. Harry Duhan was club champion in 1907 and SA champion in 1910, but he moved about a lot, so we probably shouldn't count him. Then in 1935 we had Jack Archer, who was mentioned by Mervyn. In 1977 the SA champion was Durban born and bred David Walker, who was living at the time in Cape Town. Finally, in 1987 the SA title was won by Charles de Villiers, who was living in Durban for a couple of years, after which he returned to his home city of Cape Town.

The World Chess Federation, known as FIDE from its French initials (Federation Internationale des Eschecs) was founded in 1924. South Africa was expelled from FIDE in 1977 because of apartheid, and was readmitted to the world body in 1992, the year that CHESSA was formed.

The current FIDE laws of chess were approved in 2008 at the FIDE congress held in Dresden, Germany. These laws came into effect from 1 July 2009 and apply to all chess events held in South Africa. The Chess Cafe website contains an interesting article on the changes.

CHESSA is the national organising body of chess in South Africa. The reader is referred to the CHESSA Home Page for news and information on forthcoming events.

The one magazine that I read every week is Mark Crowther's publication called "The Week In Chess", popularly known as TWIC. TWIC has details of events from all over the world, and typically contains over 1000 games in every issue! Mark has been publishing TWIC since September 1994, reaching his 500th magazine in 2004. Here is where to find the TWIC Home Page.

Another favourite page of mine is that of ChessBase. The page is updated daily when big tournaments are on, and their reports contain dozens of beautiful photos of the players and the venues. Click here to go to ChessBase.