Controversy over South Africa’s place at Waterville golf event

AGAINST the backdrop of the forthcoming inauguration of Barrack Obama as the first African-American president of the US, the controversy over South Africa’s participation in the World Cup of Golf at Waterville in July 1978 is a reminder of how much things have changed in 30 years.

Pressure to exclude South Africa from sport had grown over the boycott of the Montreal Olympics by many African countries.

Ireland was keeping a keen eye on Canada as the Commonwealth Games were due to begin in Edmonton in July. Ironically, golf’s world cup was known as the Canada Cup when Harry Bradshaw and Christy O’Connor won it for Ireland in 1957.

Patrick F Power, the Irish ambassador in Ottawa, warned the Canadians were only banning South African teams that were selected on an apartheid basis. This was easy for Canada, he wrote, because the two countries did not have teams that were likely to compete with each other in the games that were popular in Canada, such as ice hockey or Canadian football. On the other hand, Ireland could compete with South Africa in rugby.

The government had insisted that the authorities should emphasise the South African team was selected on a non-racial basis. The Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement under the chairmanship of Trinity College Dublin lecturer and future education minister of South Africa, Kadar Asmal, opposed the participation of South Africa.

“We have incontrovertible evidence that the South Africa team which will participate at Waterville is selected on racial grounds,” he wrote to foreign affairs minister Michael O’Kennedy. “This is the most serious challenge that governmental policy has faced since the disgraceful participation of a Southern Rhodesian team in the World Ploughing Championship in Co Wexford in 1973. The Afro-Asian countries have now a sufficient degree of ‘clout’ in world sport and they will not tolerate the collaboration of Irish sportsmen with racist South Africa.”

Ernie Evans, a Glenbeigh hotelier and director of Bord Fáilte, argued that South Africa’s leading golfer, Gary Player, was a member of the anti-apartheid movement and had a black caddy and sponsored two black professionals on the circuit.

John A Mulcahy, the owner of the Waterville course, asked the government to endorse the event as it had been assured by the organisers that the selection of the South Africa team “was non-discriminatory” and in compliance with government guidelines.

Without a public statement from the promoters, however, taoiseach Jack Lynch refused to give the assurance sought.

Hence the event was transferred from Waterville and later held in Hawaii, where the teenage Barack Obama was living at the time.