BASSETERRE St. Kitts – THE South African native, who is accused of faking sign language interpretation at Nelson Mandela’s Memorial Service held at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Tuesday (Dec. 10), has apologised and claimed to have suffered bouts of schizophrenia while performing the duty of interpreter.
In an interview with the South Africa’s Star, the interpreter, 42 year-old Thamsanqa Jantjie, said, “There was nothing I could do…I was alone in a very dangerous situation. I tried to control myself and not show the world what was going on. I am very sorry. It's the situation I found myself in."
Although the interpreter could not say what triggered the attack, he explained to the news entity that he was seeing things and hearing loud voices in his head which weaken his ability to hear and interpret the speeches.
Jantjie added that because he could not have left the stage, he decided to proceed in order to not cause further embarrassment.
"Life is unfair. This illness is unfair. Anyone who doesn't understand this illness will think that I'm just making this up," he pleaded.
On Thursday (Dec. 12), the South African government admitted that Jantjie lacked the requisite qualifications for the job he was hired to do and claimed that the company which supplied him had a history of "cheating"; contradicting Jantjie, who said he was qualified for the task.
According to The Guardian, Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, the Deputy Minister for Women, Children and People with Disabilities, conceded that a mistake was made. "It was bad. Was he a fake? No. Does he have the training? He has only the introduction to the training. That's like a lot of South Africans”.
"It is the first time I've seen complaints come to my office from the deaf community about him. It was the first time yesterday that the deaf community had brought it to my attention," the Minister said.
When asked by the publication if anyone understood Jantjie's gestures, she said: "We will find someone who understands him, who requested his services, but we're not going to do it now."
According to The Associated Press, Jantjie said he has schizophrenia and was trying his best to control himself as he heard voices throughout the three-hour memorial event.
"What happened that day, I see angels come to the stadium ... I start realizing that the problem is here. And the problem, I don't know the attack of this problem, how will it come," AP reported him as saying.
That media house also stated that several sign language experts have complained that Jantjie’s signing at the memorial was gibberish, not American Sign Language nor South African signing, and that South Africa's leading deaf association denounced him as a fake and said he was simply making up gestures.
Many South Africans has called this controversy an embarrassment as they commemorate a 10-day farewell to Mandela, whose remains were lying in state for a second day on Thursday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where he was sworn in as the nation's first black president in 1994.
