* There is amazing love and passion for chess in prison and the happiness chess brings to their lives
* Chess is a game that not only allows the inmates to spend a quality time and socialize in a smart and safe way
* But also can serve for decreasing such common symptoms like depression, stress and anxiety
By Duncan Mlanjira
Former Chess Association of Malawi (CHESSAM) president, Susan Namangale — who is also Zone 4.5 president and the Global Head of the USA charity, The Gift of Chess — has delivered certificates to Zomba Maximum Prison for their participation in international chess federation, FIDE intercontinental chess championship last year.
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Namangale, who is also founder of Dadaz Chess Academy — that was primarily initiated with a quest to groom prodigies all over the country to promote the sport at grassroots and help Malawi become a strong chess-playing nation — successfully inculcated chess-playing culture amongst prison inmates using the sport for mindset change for them to become useful citizens once liberated into the society.
In her message on Facebook, Namangale said she went to deliver the certificates and to discuss Dadaz Academy’s chess plans for this year and was inspired to witness the “amazing love and passion for chess in prison and the happiness chess brings to their lives.
“Why chess in Prison?” she wrote on Facebook. “Chess is a game that not only allows the inmates to spend a quality time and socialize in a smart and safe way, but also can serve for decreasing such common symptoms like depression, stress and anxiety.
“Developing memory and logical thinking, improving concentration skills and imagination may foster their reintegration after liberation. Chess inspires self-motivation, develops the capacity to for-see consequences.”
She added that Dadaz Chess Academy’s prison program helps intergrate ex-inmates into society, saying: “When the chess players from prison get released, we give them chess sets gifted by The Gift of Chess and recruit them as our volunteers to help spread the love of chess in their society.
“[It is] to support their intergration and become change agents after spending time in prison with a hope that they can become useful citizens.
“Using chess as a lesson that when you make a mistake on the chess game doesn’t mean you are a loser, but you have a chance to make other better moves and improve your game to position yourself for a checkmate and so with whatever blunders inmates made to end up in prison, they have a chance to improve their life and become better people in society.”
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With support from the Prison Commissioner General, engineering company Mota Engil and M1 Electronics, Dadaz organised two prison teams of Maula and Zomba prisons that participated in the intercontinental Online Chess Championship in October.
This was the first time for Malawi to register prison chess teams that saw Maula team finishing in quarterfinals and the Chess in Prison programme has reached out to 16 penitentiaries in Malawi where strong clubs were formed at Maula, Zomba, Biyadzi Juvenile and Nkhotakota where tournaments were organised within the prisons walls and awarded with prizes and medals.
Dadaz Academy is an ambassador for The Gift of Chess which distributes free chess sets and through Dadaz, over 1,000 chess sets (5 set gifts) were given out in the last quarter of 2023 in schools and prisons.
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