Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign finally admitted, Tuesday night, that Biden was not arrested fighting Apartheid in South Africa or agitating for the Nelson Mandela’s release from prison on the “streets of Soweto.”
Instead, a campaign official said Tuesday, Biden was merely “separated” from members of the Congressional Black Caucus while exiting the plane as the Congressional delegation arrived in South Africa for a tour of the country, sometime in the 1970s.
Biden had likely hoped to side-step the issue during Tuesday night’s debate in South Carolina, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) mentioned Nelson Mandela in passing late in the debate — perhaps intentionally — triggering questions for Biden’s staff in the post-debate “spin room.” Sanders “was citing an inspirational quote from the dissident and statesman,” Slate reported Wednesday, “but it also summoned the specter of the peculiar stories his rival Joe Biden has been telling about Mandela recently.”
At an event in Columbia, South Carolina, held in early February, Slate noted, Biden highlighted his friendship with Mandela to a crowd of mostly African-American voters — a major demographic in South Carolina and one that will likely determine the outcome of Saturday’s primary. Biden told the crowd that he was “arrested” in South Africa, alongside a United Nations ambassador, demanding to see Nelson Mandela in prison.
This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Biden told the crowd. “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 the island.”
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11.27.2024