Thamsanqa Jantjie has been criticized for signing gibberish at Nelson Mandela’s memorial in South Africa, where he was supposed to interpret the speeches of world leaders for deaf audience members. Jantjie recently revealed that he has schizophrenia, and that he suffered an episode while signing at the event.
Jantjie told Johannesburg’s Star newspaper that he had hallucinations and was hearing voices. “There was nothing I could do. I was alone in a very dangerous situation,” Jantjie said. “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.”
This isn’t the first time he has been accused of faulty signing though. A fellow interpreter with the Deaf Federation of South Africa, Francois Deysel, said that Jantjie had a similar episode at an event in 2012. “There was no sign language used. It was only slapping of hands of movement of arms,” Deysel said of Jantjie’s interpreting in 2012.
Cara Loening, director of Sign Language Education and Devlopment in Cape Town, also noticed that there was no real sign language used at Mandela’s service. “He wasn’t even doing anything, There was not one sign there. Nothing. He was literally flapping his arms around,” she said.
However, in an interview with the radio station Talk Radio 702 on Thursday, Jantjie did not acknowledge that anything went wrong. When asked about his performance, he said he was very happy with it. “Absolutely! What I have been doing, I think I have been a champion of sign language. I have interpreted many big events. Not only the event that’s in question now.”
