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Thamsanqa Jantjie, the fake sign language interpreter
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I know y'all must have heard of the fake interpreter who was
signing rubbish at the funeral for Mandela in SA. Well more info
has surfaced about the violent crime charges that Thamsanqa
Jantjie, the fake sign language interpreter faced a decade ago.
From NYPost.com
The bogus sign language interpreter at last week’s Nelson Mandela memorial service was among a group of people who accosted two men found with a stolen television and burned them to death by setting fire to tires placed around their necks, one of the interpreter’s cousins and three of his friends told The Associated Press Monday.
But Thamsanqa Jantjie never went to trial for the 2003 killings when other suspects did in 2006 because authorities determined he was not mentally fit to stand trial, said the four. They insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the fake signing fiasco, which has deeply embarrassed South Africa’s government and prompted a high-level investigation into how it happened.
Their account of the killings matched a description of the crime and
the outcome for Jantjie that he himself described in an interview
published on Sunday by the Sunday Times newspaper of
Johannesburg.
“It was a community thing, what you call mob justice, and I was
also there,” Jantjie told the newspaper.
Jantjie was not at his house Monday, and the cousin told AP Jantjie
had been picked up by someone in a car Sunday and had not
returned. His cellphone rang through to an automatic message
saying Jantjie was not reachable.
Instead of standing trial, Jantjie was institutionalized for a period of
longer than a year, the four said, and then returned to live in his
poor township neighborhood on the outskirts of Soweto. At some
point after that, they said, he started getting jobs doing sign
language interpretation at events for the governing African National
Congress Party.
Jantjie told the AP last week he has schizophrenia and hallucinated,
seeing angels while gesturing incoherently just 3 feet away from
President Barack Obama and other world leaders during the
Tuesday ceremony at a Soweto stadium. Signing experts said his
arm and hand movements were mere gibberish.
In the interview last Thursday, Jantjie said he had been violent in
the past “a lot” but declined to provide more details and blamed his
violence on his schizophrenia, for which he said he was
institutionalized for 19 months in a period that included time during
2006. The cousin and the three friends said the “necklacing” killing
of the suspected thieves occurred within a few hundred meters
(yards) from Jantjie’s tidy concrete home near ramshackle
dwellings.
The four spoke to the AP on Monday in Jantjie’s neighborhood, and
one of the friends described himself as Jantjie’s best friend.
Necklacing was a method of killing that was fairly common during
the struggle against apartheid by blacks on blacks suspected of
aiding the white government or belonging to opposing factions. The
method was also used in tribal disputes in the 1980s and 1990s.
While people who encounter suspect thieves in South Africa have
been known to beat or kill them to mete out punishment, necklacing
them has been rare.
An investigation is under way by South African officials to
determine who hired Jantjie as the onstage interpreter at the
Mandela memorial service and if and how he received security
clearance. The officials have not said how long their investigation
will take place, and reaching them for updates was difficult
Monday, a public holiday in South Africa.
Four government departments involved in organizing the historic
memorial service have distanced themselves from the hiring of
Jantjie, telling the AP they had no contact with him. A fifth
government agency, the Department of Public Works, declined to
comment and referred all inquiries about Jantjie to the office of
South Africa’s top government spokeswoman, who has only said a
“comprehensive report” will eventually be released.
Jantjie told the AP he was hired for the event by an interpretation
company that has used him on a freelance basis for years, but
government officials have said the owners of the company have
disappeared. The address that Jantjie provided for the company was
occupied by a different company that is not involved in
interpreting for the deaf.
The AP was unable to verify the existence of the school where
Jantjie said he studied signing for a year. An online search for the
school, which Jantjie said was called Komani and located in
Eastern Cape Province, turned up nothing. Advocates for the deaf
said they have never heard of the school and said there are no
known sign language institutes in the province.
The Star newspaper of Johannesburg reported Friday that Jantjie
said he studied sign language interpretation in Britain at the
“University of Tecturers.” A British charity that awards
qualifications for deaf and deaf-blind communications techniques
said it had never heard of the university.
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