If Joe Biden isn’t lying, he’s probably misremembering.
In the case of the former vice president’s recent claim that he was arrested in South Africa in the late 1970s for attempting to meet with then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela, Biden almost certainly lied, according to his own staff.
Biden “was separated from the [Congressional Black Caucus] members he was traveling with at the airport,” campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield told reporters on Feb. 25. “Biden was separated from a congressional delegation in South Africa and was referring to that.”
“When he landed, he was not allowed to go through the same door as the rest of the party he was with,” she said. “Obviously, this 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 to the black door. He was separated.”
Her explanation is a long, long way off from the version of events Biden told supporters earlier this month in both Nevada and South Carolina.
“This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Biden said during a Feb. 11 campaign event in Columbia, South Carolina. “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.”
Later, on Feb. 16, Biden told a crowd in Las Vegas, Nevada, “After [Mandela] got free and became president, he came to Washington and came to my office. 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.’”
His anecdote immediately raised red flags for four reasons.
First, for all his years in public life, no one could recall Biden ever talking about being arrested in South Africa, which, according to the former vice president himself, happened at around the time he proposed to his wife in 1977.
Second, after Biden told the Mandela story on three separate occasions on the 2020 campaign trail, no one could find evidence of the alleged incident, which is astonishing considering Biden was sworn in as a senator in 1973, four years prior to his supposed arrest in South Africa. It should not be difficult to find evidence of a member of the U.S. Congress being forcibly detained in a foreign country during an overseas trip in the late 1970s.
Third, Soweto is roughly 900 miles away from Robben Island.
Lastly, Biden’s campaign refused to respond to multiple requests for comment regarding his anecdote, including five separate requests from the New York Times. In fact, it took Biden’s spokeswoman a full two weeks after he first claimed he had been arrested in South Africa to address the matter.
As to the campaign’s explanation about Biden getting separated at an airport in South Africa, it is important to note that congressional delegations at that time would not have landed in the country of apartheid. They would have landed in Lesotho, which has been its own independent kingdom since 1966.
This is the part where Biden’s supporters argue now that he merely misremembered what happened. Well, good luck convincing people that the former vice president simply “misremembered” being “arrested” in South Africa at an airport at which he didn’t land and then “misremembered” being thanked personally by Nelson Mandela for his bravery.
At this point, it may be safe to just use the word “lie” to describe Biden’s tale of courage under South African fire.
