Two of South Africa’s most famous golfers were drawn into a tense Oval Office discussion about race in their country on Wednesday, after President Trump ambushed his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, with videos intended to support his false claim of mass killings of Afrikaners.
The meeting between the two presidents began cordially but quickly deteriorated into a back-and-forth between the presidents about White House claims about the targeted killings of Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that once led the nation’s apartheid government. Mr. Trump played a video of race-baiting slogans from a firebrand opposition leader and then handed Mr. Ramaphosa a stack of papers that he said were news accounts of killings of “thousands” of Afrikaners.
As Mr. Ramaphosa repeatedly tried to debunk the claims, Mr. Trump dug in. Eventually he turned to the golfers — Ernie Els, the former world No. 1 golfer, and Retief Goosen, a two-time U.S. Open champion — to break the tension.
Mr. Els pulled out his passport as he described himself as a “proud South African,” and then invoked Nelson Mandela’s calls for unity in his country. “I know there was a lot of anger through the transition, there was a lot of stuff happening in the apartheid days,” he said. “We grew in the apartheid era, but I don’t think two wrongs make a right.”
“We really wanted to meet you, meet the administration, and see our way forward, because we still want to see our country flourish,” Mr. Els added.
Mr. Goosen, similarly prodded to speak by Mr. Trump, shared that his relatives on farms lived behind electric fences in fear of crime, like many other South Africans. “But the guys live a great life, despite what’s going on,” he said.
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