By ALAN CLENDENNING and JUERGEN BAETZ
By ALAN CLENDENNING and JUERGEN BAETZ
Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG — The sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial said he suffers from schizophrenia and hallucinated and saw angels while gesturing incoherently just 3 feet away from President Barack Obama and other world leaders, outraging deaf people worldwide who said his signs amounted to gibberish.
South African officials scrambled Thursday to explain how they came to hire the man and said they were investigating what vetting process, if any, he underwent for his security clearance.
“In the process, and in the speed of the event, a mistake happened,” deputy Cabinet minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu said.
She apologized to deaf people around the world offended by the incomprehensible signing.
However, she declined to say whether a government department, the presidency or the ruling African National Congress party was responsible for hiring the sign interpreter, telling reporters it isn’t the time to “point fingers and vilify each other and start shouting.”
The man at the center of the controversy said in an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday he began hallucinating while onstage in the stadium filled with tens of thousands of people and he tried not to panic because there were “armed policemen around me.”
Thamsanqa Jantjie added he has schizophrenia, was once hospitalized in a mental health facility for 19 months and has been violent in the past.
The disclosures raised serious security concerns for Obama, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other dignitaries who stood next to Jantjie as they eulogized Mandela at FNB Stadium in Soweto, the black township at the center of the struggle against racist white rule. Mandela died Dec. 5 at 95.
In Washington, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said vetting for criminal history and other appropriate background checks of the people onstage were the responsibility of the South Africans. He added Secret Service agents are “always in close proximity to the president.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on how South Africa handled the hiring of the translator.
However, he added: “If in fact the individual was not signing, that’s unfortunate because that meant that people who rely on sign language to follow the speeches were not able to.”
Jantjie has been seen on video performing sign language interpretation at other prominent events in South Africa criticized as fake by advocates for the deaf, including at an appearance last December with South African President Jacob Zuma.
The government left many questions about the bizarre episode unanswered, including how much money the translation company was paid and Jantjie’s precise role in the company — and even whether it really exists.
AP journalists who visited the address Jantjie provided for SA Interpreters found a different company, whose managers said they knew nothing about the translation firm. A woman who answered the phone at a number Jantjie provided said she worked for the company that hired him but declined comment and hung up.
The government said it tried to track down the company but the owners “have vanished into thin air,” according to Bogopane-Zulu, the deputy minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities.
She said the translation company offered sub-standard services and the rate they purportedly paid the translator, $77 a day, is far below the usual rate of up to $164 an hour.