Honoring Nelson Mandela gone wrong

In the event with many major world leaders, a man used fake sign language on stage. Standing next to President Obama and many other leading officials he used fake sign language to interpret what these people were saying in honor of the fallen Nelson Mandela.

To me, when I first heard this I didn’t really believe it. However, if you go back and watch the event the man was just using common hand gestures. I don’t think this is right at all. The death people in attendance should have been able to take part in the ceremony in honor of Nelson Mandela.

He was just as much their leader as he was to people who are not deaf.

According to reports, the man’s name was Thamsanqa Jantjie who had a medical record of many mental illnesses. According to him and his wife that day he had a vision of angels flying in the room and lost his focus. Hmmmm… why would the officials hire him to sign if he had these mental illness issues?

I mean c’mon people this guy was standing next to some very prominent people around the world. What would happen to all these countries if he had gone mad and hurt their officials? That is not right. People with that status in society always have others who do not like them and want them dead. Anyone who is going to be so close to these prominent leaders should have to be background checked.

However, the South African government didn’t look into Jantjie’s medical records before hiring him for the job. I know this was probably a mistake and nothing terrible came out of it, but really? That’s putting a lot of things at risk.

Hopefully this taught the government of South Africa a lesson and other country’s officials a lesson on making sure they do full background checks and full medical checks.

This situation could’ve potentially put a lot of people in danger. Good thing in this situation it did not.

It is just horrible though that the deaf people in attendance were cheated like this. They did not get to join alongside the people of their country because they could not understand what was going on due to this. They too had the right to remember and honor Nelson Mandela but because of this mix up they did not get the chance too.

I hope somehow this can be made up to them and that everyone learns from this.

The man is now in a mental hospital and the deaf people in attendance should be paid back in some way for this event.

An article on this can be found here:

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/19/21969085-fake-interpreter-from-mandela-event-is-admitted-to-psychiatric-hospital-report?lite