Jantjie’s fraudulent interpretations may be some of his least disturbing behavior. On Friday, eNCA.com reported that Jantjie was accused of murder in 2003. He also faced charges for kidnapping, theft, housebreaking and attempted murder. Jantjie was sentenced to three years in prison in the theft case, though there are no records to indicate whether he served the sentence, according to eNCA.
The man who used jibberish sign language at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service also used incoherent hand gestures to sign a notorious anti-white song sung last year by current South African President Jacob Zuma.
Thamsanqua Jantjie, 34, late said that he is schizophrenic and was hallucinating during the Mandela memorial speeches. The interpreter also admitted that he’d been prone to fits of violence in the past, an admission that was worrisome given his proximity to President Barack Obama and other world leaders.
According to NBC News, Jantjie has worked two other gigs on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s majority party. He was paid $85 per diem for his work at the memorial, NBC reported.
One was an event where President Zuma led gatherers in “Kill the Boer,” an apartheid protest song that South African courts have ruled is hate speech.
Boer is an Afrikaans word for farmer and is often used to refer to whites. Thousands of South Africa’s white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid. Some have called this a form of genocide and claim that the song provokes racial violence.
[…]
