The Phoney Sign Interpreter at Mandela's Funeral
 

South Africa didn't vet the sign interpreter for Nelson's Funeral. He's a complete fake - his sign language interpretation was meaningless, and he's unknown to the SA sign language community.

Just after a bit of that 15 minutes of fame, however he can get it, apparently.

Oddly, SA uses a totally different sign language than the rest of the world.

That's not odd at all--most countries have their own sign language, even ones that speak the same verbal language.

Latest I saw was that he wasn't so much a fraud as he was a schizophrenic suffering a panic attack up on the stage near all those armed cops, just trying to fake his way through the situation. Still not good security.

Wow! This morning's paper says that he has been charged in the past with murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, breaking and entering, and malicious damage to property. Those cases appear to have not gone to trial because he wasn't competent to stand trial.

This incident could have been much much worse. An actively hallucinating schizophrenic with a long history of violence was standing right next to multiple heads of state.

If that was the plot of a movie you'd say it was far fetched nonsense.