WHAT would Nelson Mandela have made of Thamsanqa Jantjie? It's a question that crossed our minds, here at the Mahogany Ridge, as the bellowing over the sign language interpreter grew more and more deafening.
Perhaps he would have been disappointed. It was his memorial service after all, and he'd have wanted things to have gone smoothly. But I'm almost certain he would have also seen the lighter side of it all.
Think about it. Around the world viewers were told of Mandela's struggle and triumphs; of his stoic determination, patience and magnanimity; of his legacy of freedom and democracy; of his dedication to justice and a lasting peace in South Africa. And from Jantjie there came stuff about cigarettes, prawns and rocking horses?
This is according to some of the translations of his gibberish out there on the Internet; you'd have to be made of stone not to think it a bit amusing.
True, there were security concerns. This was not just a guy standing next to the world's leaders pulling off moves as if he was a backing vocalist in an R&B outfit. No, this was someone who'd later claim he was a violence-prone schizophrenic who'd seen angels in the stadium. Hands up those who thought the last chap to go off meds like that was Dmitri Tsafendas?
Jantjie should not have been there. Fact. But that's not his fault. Neither is it the ruling party's. Or so claims their spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, himself no stranger to incomprehensibility. Although he admitted that the ANC had used Jantjie's services in the past, he didn't offer an explanation as to why Jantjie's shortcomings were not a problem on those occasions. But he did say that, in this case, the state was to blame.