2020 Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign is walking back the former vice president’s claim that he was arrested while trying to see South African leader Nelson Mandela in prison.
Biden, 77, made the claim during campaign events earlier this month despite not mentioning it in his 2007 memoir, which included details about his trips to South Africa in the 1970s. The New York Times additionally couldn’t find any reference to his arrest in the paper’s archives.
His deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield attempted to clarify the story on Tuesday after the campaign declined to answer questions on the remarks, which were rebutted by former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young.
“He was separated from his party at the airport,” Bedingfield explained, referring to when the former vice president was separated from black colleagues in Johannesburg on a congressional trip to South Africa in the 1970s.
“It was a separation,” she added. “They, he was not allowed to go through the same door that the — the rest of the party he was with. Obviously, it was apartheid South Africa. There was a white door, there was a black door. He did not want to go through the white door and have the rest of the party go through the black door. He was separated. This was during a trip while they were there in Johannesburg.”
Biden told a crowd during a campaign event in South Carolina earlier this week, “I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robben Island.”
The story echoed another one he recalled on the campaign trail last week.
“After he got free and became president, he came to Washington and came to my office,” Biden said of Mandela at a brunch in Las Vegas at the time. “He threw his arms around me and said, ‘I want to say thank you.’ I said, ‘What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?’ He said, ‘You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me.’”
