So Joe Biden lied about getting arrested over his trip to meet Mandela... Big deal

Why did Joe Biden have to lie about being arrested by the Apartheid authorities back in the 1970s as he was trying to go see Nelson Mandela in prison?

One reason is, of course, that he must be feeling the heat from the campaigns mounted by his fellow Democrats who may be steadily eroding his support heading for the showdown with incumbent Donald Trump come November. The Democrats’ primaries have produced a couple of surprises, including a menacing surge by ‘socialist’ Bernie Sanders.

Of all the candidates among the Democrats, Bernie has come out as the unexpected spoiler for Biden, with his avowedly socialist rhetoric and counterintuitive support among young Americans.

This latter point could have an explanation in the cynicism that the youth has over the years allowed in their midst when considering the traditional American politics of since George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The typical ‘professional’ politician is treated with deserved suspicion, contempt even, while the unconventional outlier is given a benefit of the doubt when he or she seems like a waft of fresh air in an asphyxiated room.

So, Biden must have wanted to take the wind out of Bernie’s sail by inserting Mandela in the conversation, because he actually did go to South Africa, even if seeing Madiba was not part of the plan.

Hey, cut the man a little slack. I mean, here he was, in the mid-1970s, Mandela is in prison, some voices in the world are clamouring for his release, and now the former prisoner has attained saint-like status, and you still want Biden say he went there to talk to the prisoner’s oppressors and not to try to see the man who came to symbolise the anti-Apartheid resistance the world over?

No, you are being unfair: I know many people who had nothing whatsoever to do with that struggle but who today write autobiographies that could make you believe they were the greatest of supporters even when in reality they were only too happy to smooch with Washington and London and Paris when these capitals were the very incarnation of the evil that we fought against in South Africa.

As they say, hypocrisy is the homage that scoundrels pay to honest people, so let it pass.

So, Biden can be excused for wanting a little Madiba magic to rub off his shirt sleeve, like a passer-by’s eau-de-cologne when he touches you in a crowded theatre, although one could have issues with trying to abridge the distance between Soweto — which was where Biden went — and Robben Island, some 700 or so kilometres away, where Mandela was.

People who accompanied Biden on that visit contest Biden’s version, including Andrew Young, who was America’s representative to the United Nations then, but does it matter? The man would surely have loved to have a record stating that he had wanted to go to meet Mandela but that he had been stopped by Apartheid officials. A nice little story, no?

We may never know for sure that Biden had wanted to go to the Island, but the least we can say today is that he regrets not having tried to go and having been ‘arrested’ by those nasty, beefy racist guards.

Now, Biden’s campaign has officially nixed that claim, saying instead that he had been ‘separated’ from his African American colleagues in the delegation somewhere in Johannesburg. Now, that is moons away from ‘arrest,’ on Robben Island, and the former vice-president should know it.

Not so much unlike their African counterparts who started supporting the struggle after Mandela came out of prison, the Americans and other imperialist nations just did not know how to relate to the man they had branded a terrorist all along, even to the day he addressed Congress. Yes, he was still on the American list of terrorists.

Whether exploitation of the ‘Madiba magic’ helps Biden to weather the challenge by Bernie and other fellow Democrats will, in part, depend on the way he distinguishes himself from Donald Trump in matters relating to ethics, honesty and truthfulness.

And those are three coins you don’t look for in the transactions operating in political arenas, least of all in any contest where Trump, the perennial liar, is a candidate. Biden might actually sound like a Sunday school kid.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: