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South African Version Of Monopoly Game To Pass Go In Time For Holidays

South African Version Of Monopoly Game To Pass Go In Time For Holidays

South Africans have voted for their favorite streets and locations around the country to land a spot on a new Monopoly board.

A local version of the beloved board game, Mzansi Monopoly — Mzansi is Xhosa for South Africa — is due out Nov. 25, just in time for the holiday season.

Egypt, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa all have older local editions of Monopoly.

Votes for the newest edition included favorite spots such as the Big Hole diamond mine in Kimberly, the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg and the elephants of Addo Elephant National Park, according to Traveller 24.

The list of streets and places that made it onto the board game will be revealed upon release, but here’s what we know:

An iconic street name will be on the Monopoly Mzansi board — a street that was once home to South African Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, according to a leak on the Monopoly South Africa Facebook fan page.

Sun City and Table Mountain also made the board, My Gaming reported.

Gaming company Hasbro invited the public to vote on a number of locations to feature on its latest edition, with voting ending March 31, Eyewitness News reported.

The game board is divided into three South African regions — East coast, West coast and inland areas.

Durban’s Gateway Theatre and Golden Mile beachfront were among the possible candidates.

“South Africans are known for their … pride in their country,” said Siphiwe Thabethe, Monopoly South Africa marketing manager. “This is why we are extremely excited about the upcoming launch of ‘Monopoly Mzansi’. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get all the streets, places and tourist attractions that make up the essence of South Africa, from Vilakazi Street to The Big Hole, on board.”

The final South African game version will include 22 street and place names and four transport hubs.

U.S.-based gaming company Hasbro became the owner of the Monopoly board game in 1935, and celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2015. The story of the game’s origins that most people know is wrong, according to a 2015 New York Times report:

The tale, repeated for decades and often tucked into the game’s box along with the Community Chest and Chance cards, was that an unemployed man named Charles Darrow dreamed up Monopoly in the 1930s. He sold it and became a millionaire, his inventiveness saving him — and Parker Brothers, the beloved New England board game maker — from the brink of destruction.

The trouble is, that origin story isn’t exactly true. It turns out that Monopoly’s origins begin not with Darrow 80 years ago, but decades before with a bold, progressive woman named Elizabeth Magie, who until recently has largely been lost to history, and in some cases deliberately written out of it.

Magie filed a legal claim for her Landlord’s Game in 1903, more than three decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing Monopoly. She actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time — people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

She created two sets of rules for her game: an anti­monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. Her dualistic approach was a teaching
tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally superior.

And yet it was the monopolist version of the game that caught on, with Darrow claiming a version of it as his own and selling it to Parker Brothers. While Darrow made millions and struck an agreement that ensured he would receive royalties,
Magie’s income for her creation was reported to be a mere $500.

To play Monopoly, players move around the game-board buying or trading properties, developing their properties with houses and hotels, and collecting rent from their opponents. The goal is to drive them all into bankruptcy leaving one monopolist in control of the entire economy. Since the board game was first commercially sold in the 1930s, it has become a part of popular world culture, been locally licensed in more than 103 countries and printed in more than 37 languages.

A new wave of licensed products began in 1994, when Hasbro granted a license to publish a San Diego edition of Monopoly, followed by more than 100 more local editions. Licensees include Bestman Games in Nigeria.