ANC Asked Schizophrenic Man to be Sign Translator At Farewell Ceremony for Mandela

Turns out the bogus sign language translator the African National Congress ruling party came up with for the big political show they staged to mark the death of Nelson Mandela, the iconic former ANC leader and first post-apartheid president of South Africa, is a diagnosed schizophrenic with a self-admitted history of violence. You'd think that wouldn't be so hard to ascertain, by, say, a records check, or talking to people who knew him. You'd also think that a national government would already have a list of reliable translators they'd used before, or could call a reputable organization of deaf people or that serves the death to find someone. [1] But I guess the farewell ceremony for the head of the liberation struggle, the political giant who led the ushering in of the post-apartheid era, the man on whom the ANC rests its very legitimacy today, just didn't seem very important to the ANC hacks who run the country now. The ANC couldn't even get it together to provide promised buses to take the people they misrule to the site of the ceremony.

For the televised ceremony (watched by an estimated hundreds of millions), attended by thousands in person (the stadium where the event was staged seats 93,000), the “translator” provided “a mush of jibberish” in the words of the BBC, meaningless hand gestures for the deaf. An ANC government mouthpiece offed this excuse; “he became overwhelmed,” she said. Actually he's mentally ill. And as I said yesterday, I think he was seeking attention.

Now he's running around giving media interviews, explaining his behavior by saying “angels” “visited” him on stage, hallucinations that are a sure sign of mental illness (or of acceptable religious fanaticism). The BBC sees one important issue as being; was he a security threat to nearby political poobahs, in particular Obama?

The BBC put the fool schizoid on the radio, giving him more of the attention he apparently craves. Who cares what this moron mental case says? (I can tell you it was uninformative and unedifying, predictably. But in the age of celebrity culture, the media makes instant celebrities even of mentally ill hustlers like this.)

The BBC wastes a lot of time with pointless filler like this. Since they fired so many of their journalists, they do a lot of that these days. (They also use up hours with guests opining on the day's news, another way to save money- they don't have to pay the gabheads who leap at the free exposure, nor pay to fill up time with actual reporting.)

Just to make the day perfect, the home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu was burglarized while he was at the observance for Mandela. A perfect symbol of the anarchy, social breakdown, and incredibly high crime rate in the slowly-decaying country.

The following essay, posted yesterday, already said the rest of what needs to be said about this episode and the publicity event staged to promote and glorify the ANC, foreign politicians, and celebrities, who got to bathe in the reflected moral stature of Mandela.

1] In fact, the Johannesburg advocacy group DeafSA pointed out that the fraudster's mimicry bore no relation to actual sign language- in other words, his acting out couldn't pass as a credible imitation for five seconds. Yet this guy was given security clearance and a pass to stand on the stage near the various “world leaders” speechifying for the alleged edification of the global masses and perform his insulting pantomime.

                                                                  Two Phonies on a Stage