South Africa investigates Mandela interpreter

Mandela

The South African government has commenced investigation into how the sign interpreter at the memorial service for former South African President Mandela on Tuesday was given security clearance.

The interpreter has been identified as Thamsanqa Dyantyi.

Dyantyi drew outrage from the deaf community on Tuesday with his sign interpretation of the memorial service. He has since been dubbed a fake interpreter by the deaf community in South Africa, who also rejected him.

Deputy Disability Minister, Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, told a news conference on Thursday, “Firstly, I don’t think South Africa as a country would put at risk anybody’s security, especially those of heads of state.

“When somebody provides a service of a sign language interpreter, I don’t think… somebody would say, ‘Is your head ok? Do you have any mental disability?’ I think the focus was on, ‘Are you able to sign? Can you provide the services?’

“In terms of security clearance that is in a process, we are requesting to check his vetting.”

Bogopane-Zulu also apologised to the deaf community but said there was no reason for the country to be embarrassed. She accused Dyanti’s employers of being cheats.

“There are as many as a hundred sign language dialects,” she said, explaining that Mr. Dyantyi speaks Xhosa and that “the English was a bit too much for him.”

She also accused Dyantyi’s employers of being “cheats”, and said the directors of SA Interpreters had since vanished.

34-year-old Dyantyi has blamed his performance on schizophrenia, a condition for which he claims he is being treated.

He said he did not know whether it was the scale of the event or the happiness he felt about being involved that triggered the episode.

 Dyantyi claimed he suddenly lost concentration, started hearing voices and hallucinating.

He also had visions of angels coming into the stadium and was trying not to panic because there were “armed policemen around me.”

Dyantyi added that the episode impaired his ability to hear things properly and interpret what was being said, but he did not feel able to leave so he continued to sign words and phrases that did not make sense.

He however stood by his work.  He said, “For the deaf association, if they think that I have done a wrong interpretation, I ask for forgiveness. For Deaf SA, if they are telling me that I was doing a wrong interpretation, then they should answer me why they were silent all the time, all these years.”

Dyantyi declined to provide details about his hire for the four-hour memorial, watched by millions around the world, as a government inquiry looks into the matter. He said he had been drawn to the job of interpreting because he was disabled.

“You can look at my portfolio, it speaks for itself from the events that I have done in my country,” he said.

Bogopane-Zulu said the government had tracked down the company Dyantyi worked for, but the owners “seemed to have vanished.”

She said, “We managed to get hold of them and then we spoke to them, wanting some answers, and they vanished into thin air. They have been providing substandard service for years.”

As outrage over his interpretation skills have grown, so have questions about who hired him.

The ANC said it did not hire Dyantyi for the service, as it was the state that had organised the memorial.

It said in a statement, “The processes that were followed to procure Dyantyi’s services were thus government processes and not ANC processes.

“It is important to make the point that, up until yesterday, the African National Congress had not been aware of any of complaints regarding the quality of services, qualifications or reported illnesses of Dyantyi. His services had been used on previous occasions.”