Former Vice President Joe Biden admitted that he was not once arrested in South Africa after claiming he was at multiple campaign events.
On at least three occasions this month, Biden said he was “arrested with our U.N. ambassador” while trying to meet South African leader Nelson Mandela in the 1970s, prompting the now-former ambassador, Andrew Young, to refute the story.
Biden personally acknowledged that his rendition of the story was not accurate during a Friday interview on CNN. “I wasn’t arrested. I was stopped,” he said as he again recounted traveling to South Africa with members of the Congressional Black Caucus disembarking from the plane.
“They led me off first and moved me in a direction totally different. I turned around, and everybody, all the entire black delegation was going another way. I said I’m not going to go in that door that says, ‘White only,'” Biden said. The former vice president said he was told that he was not allowed to go with the other members of Congress. Biden was a senator from Delaware at the time.
“They kept me there until, finally, I decided that it was clear I wasn’t going to move,” he said. “And so, what they finally did, they said, OK, they’re not going to make the congressional delegation go through the black door. They’re not going to make me go through the white door. They took us — my memory serves me — through a baggage claim area up to a restaurant, and they cleared out a restaurant.”
Biden said Mandela later thanked him for standing up for his black colleagues during a trip to the United States, a tidbit the former vice president previously portrayed as being praise for his arrest.
“When I said arrested, I meant I was not able to move. Cops would not let me go with them, made me stay where I was,” he concluded on Friday. “I wasn’t arrested. I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go.”
Biden’s explanation came days after a campaign spokeswoman made a similar statement acknowledging that Biden was not arrested, describing it instead as “a separation” between him and his black colleagues.
