Deafcon 5 at Madiba memorial

Sign language - from someone who actually knows what the hell she's doing - so her audience actually understands what's she's communicating. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

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Straits Times (Singapore): Interpreter for deaf at Mandela memorial service was a fake, say advocates for deaf... Pardon the pun but I don't believe my ears... or my eyes.

The so-called interpreter for the deaf - the guy who stood up there with the world's heads of state and supposedly "interpreted" the speeches for the benefit of the deaf and hard-of-hearing, is apparently a fake and what he produced as an interpretation of the speeches was complete gibberish.

Sources here in South Africa have apparently named him as Thami Jantjie - and deaf people around the world are said to be incensed... Rather than being able to follow what was being said on such a momentous occasion, they had to watch Jantjie wave his arms, touch his forehead, and generally make - and make up as he went along - a series of "signs" that you or I would produce... if we were trying to swat an irritating fly.

So what should have been a solemn and moving occasion has been defiled by the stupid signage of joker Jantjie.

And by the way, this apparently is not the first time he's done this... he was "interpreting" for the deaf at an ANC function a while back.

So how much was he paid for his latest "free-style interpreting" junket? Or did he kindly insult Madiba's memory and the world's deaf for free?

The news certainly got around...

• The Guardian (UK): Mandela memorial sign language interpreter accused of being a fake
  
• The Mirror (UK): Is this the fake sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela memorial? Sources name mystery man. "Deaf people across the world were outraged after the imposter signed nonsense as he stood beside world leaders including Barack Obama in front of a TV audience of millions."

City Press: SABC bans Zuma booing from news broadcasts... What a boo-boo... it's back in the news again...and this time for not reporting it...

According to the City Press report, "While TV news broadcasters across the world led their bulletins with the booing of President Jacob Zuma at the memorial for Nelson Mandela [on Tuesday], SABC's prime-time newscasts all but erased the incidents from history."

According to the newspaper's report, the booing and the display of the soccer substitution sign by some in the crowd, did not go down well at all with the powers-that-be at the national mouthpiece... sorry, broadcaster... and City Press reports that "the crisis was managed, according to insiders, by Nyana Molete, the national TV news editor", who apparently went into the Awkward Park control room calling: "Cut away! Cut away! Cut away!"

Look, the booing was, in the view of many, the wrong thing to do on such an occasion, which was dedicated to paying tribute to arguably Africa's greatest son, but given the scandals that have surrounded Zuma's presidency, perhaps those who booed and gesticulated decided to take their chance while they had it.

There are, after all, many people in this country who reckon that it is the height of hypocrisy for some of the current leaders in government to piously get up there and blather on about making sure Madiba's legacy stays alive, while trashing that very legacy with sublime contempt through a range of scandals and other embarrassments.