From Scrabble prodigy to African diplomacy titan

In 1983, across a board at the Johannesburg Scrabble Club, a young boy named Steven Gruzd sat down to play a game alongside his mother, Arlene. Across the table was Larry Benjamin.

Neither Gruzd nor Benjamin could have known that the arrangement of letter tiles that day would forge a brotherhood spanning more than four decades.

“It is incredibly difficult to find the right words to write about Steven, because he was not just a friend – he was one of the constants of my life,” Benjamin said.

Their bond, built on thousands of Scrabble games, carried them all the way to representing South Africa side-by-side at the World Scrabble Championship in New York City and the first African Scrabble Championship in Nairobi. The lifelong friends shared their final lunch just over a week ago at the Houghton Golf Club, a cherished, ordinary afternoon of laughter and debate before the unthinkable happened.

Just days later, Gruzd’s life was tragically cut short.

According to Gauteng police spokesperson Captain Tintswalo Sibeko, a murder case was opened after Gruzd was reported missing on the evening of Friday, 27 March. He had attended a meeting in Corlett Gardens before being abducted.

The Community Security Organisation (CSO) said they were alerted to his disappearance at about 6.30pm on Friday: “The CSO rapidly deployed resources to locate the community member. Within an hour, it became apparent that the community member had been kidnapped.”

A rapid joint operation involving the CSO response team, CAP Security and law enforcement led to a breakthrough in the early hours of Saturday, resulting in the arrest of five suspects. The organisation confirmed that the incident is being investigated strictly as a criminal act of violence.

“At this point, all indications lead us to believe this is a criminal incident… what is commonly referred to as an ‘express kidnapping’ for ransom and theft,” the CSO noted, emphasising that the suspects have no known links to terrorism and that this was not a targeted attack on the community.

Gruzd’s body was discovered at the George Goch Hostel in Jeppestown.

A titan of African diplomacy

As head of the African Governance and Diplomacy Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), he was a leading authority on the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) for more than two decades.

SAIIA chief executive Elizabeth Sidiropoulos worked alongside Gruzd since he joined the institute in 2003.

Sidiropoulos’s said her thoughts were with his family, noting that his youngest daughter had graduated only a week before. “He was very, very proud of his daughters, very proud of his family,” she said, describing him simply as a “really decent, kind colleague, friend and family man”.

As a senior member of SAIIA’s management, Gruzd’s influence extended far beyond his own research, since he was instrumental in shaping the next generation of African scholars. Sidiropoulos highlighted his tireless commitment to the institute’s internship programme, where he acted as a patient and rigorous guide for young researchers.

“He was a great mentor to young people. Many of the young scholars who were put under his watch would say that he really nurtured and cultivated them.”

Gruzd’s defining professional legacy will be his unwavering dedication to the APRM, a field in which he was considered a global authority. Sidiropoulos recalled that even when the APRM faced a period of stagnation more than a decade ago, Gruzd “kept the flame alive” through his belief in its potential to transform the continent. He travelled extensively across sub-Saharan Africa, not to dictate policy, but to empower local voices.

“His view was always that it’s not about us coming in and sort of doing the work. It’s really about us creating an enabling environment… for actors within those countries, non-state actors, to really work meaningfully and make a contribution,” she explained, adding that he played a protagonist role in creating spaces for vital dialogues across the continent.

To his colleagues, Gruzd was a vital intellectual sounding board.

“I always found him a really great, dependable, reliable, wise sort of counsel to throw ideas around and brainstorm,” Sidiropoulos said.

She fondly recalled their personal exchanges outside of formal research themes.

“He was a voracious reader, and we always used to exchange ideas about books that we had discovered. He loved history. So he loved immersing himself in history books… extremely well read, extremely articulate, really intelligent.”

For the South African Jewish Board of Deputies the loss of Gruzd is deeply personal. National director Wendy Kahn remembers a colleague who brought intellect and humanity to everything he touched. During his tenure as a researcher and diplomatic liaison, Gruzd’s brilliance was always matched by his humour. A digital pioneer, he famously adopted the handle @rhymeswbruised and launched Jewish Board Talk on ChaiFM.

Even after returning to SAIIA, Gruzd remained a vital community fixture.

“Steve approached everything with brilliance and humour. We are devastated by his loss,” Kahn said.

The boy wonder of the board

Long before he was an authority on African governance, Gruzd was a child prodigy who earned the nickname “Boy Wonder” after playing his first competitive Scrabble tournament at just nine years old. That childhood passion evolved into a world-class mastery of the board, and by 1997 he was ranked the sixth-best player in the world.

Ike Obidike, president of Scrabble South Africa, recalled a horse race for the top spot at the Gauteng March Scrabble Tournament last weekend. Gruzd was trailing, but refused to yield.

“The real drama started in the last two games. Steve unleashed the entire arsenal in his armoury to blow me away. He never gave up. Just when you thought a game was over, he would spring a beautiful word that would just blow you away, and that was the brilliance of Steven Gruzd,” Obidike said.

Obidike, who worked closely with him for 27 years, remembers Gruzd as a man who fundamentally loathed conflict.

“He was a very fair, very compassionate and very peaceful person,” he said.

The most enduring image of Gruzd’s character lies in a simple act of generosity involving a soccer jersey. When Gruzd was travelling to Brazil for research, Obidike asked him to pick up a local club shirt, only to later tell Gruzd to forget it because he didn’t have the money.

“When he came back, he brought the jersey anyway. I was shocked,” Obidike said. When asked for the price, Gruzd simply replied that it was a gift. “Kindness was at the root of his relationship with people. With his death, that is the one gift I will keep with me to remember him forever.”

A lifelong constant

Benjamin said that over the past 42 years Gruzd and he had built a deep and enduring friendship founded on shared interests, mutual respect, loyalty and many common values.

“I watched him grow from a brilliant young man into an exceptional adult, husband, father, scholar and friend,” he said.

This lifelong connection reached a poignant full-circle moment in recent years when Benjamin had the opportunity to teach Gruzd’s daughter, Lauren, a moving reminder of just how long and how deeply their lives had been intertwined.

“Steven was an exceptionally bright, thoughtful, loyal and decent human being. He had a quiet strength, a serious intellect, a dry wit and a depth of character that left a lasting impression on everyone who knew him. His loss is devastating, and the shock of it is still hard to comprehend,” Benjamin said.

Gruzd is survived by his wife, Mandy, and his daughters, Lauren and Megan. DM