During the Memorial Service for former Nelson Mandela on December 10, 2013 at Johannesburg’s FNB stadium, those of us in the United States who watched the proceedings which honored and celebrated the life of one of the greatest human beings of the age noted the efforts that were made to provide language access for Deaf South Africans watching on television screens across the world via a South African Sign Language (SASL) interpreter. This represented faithfulness to one of the ideals which Mandela had spent so much of his life fighting to enthrone.
A closer examination of the interpreter quickly revealed the shocking fact that the individual was an impostor who knew no sign language of any sort known to the more than one hundred million Deaf people worldwide, but merely repeated the same five or six meaningless gestures in varying permutations for speaker after speaker irrespective of the speech’s content. This travesty not only betrayed the spirit and ideals of Nelson Mandela; it also perpetrated what we have come to call language apartheid by excluding the Deaf population of South Africa completely from the entire proceedings. The worldwide Deaf community finds this disturbing on both a systemic and a moral level.
It is not enough to say that this impostor denied Deaf South Africans access so he could be seen on international Television beside men and women of historical consequence; he also did it without compunction or regret. That in and of itself is regrettable. It also constitutes an embarrassment to the government and good people of South Africa.
We at the National Black Deaf Advocates hereby request the Government of the Republic of South Africa to:
(1) investigate the causes of this monumental disgrace;
(2) cease and desist forthwith from employing this impostor in any interpreting capacity; and
(3) work with the various Deaf and bona fide Interpreting-related agencies and organizations such as Deaf Federation of South Africa and South Africa Sign Language, Inc. to empower them to institute a formal regulatory body for the training, certification, regulation and registration of Sign Language Interpretation, Sign Language interpreters, and Sign Language Interpreter Education.
We thank you for your attention to this matter which is critical to the Deaf community’s sense of belonging as equal citizens of the Republic of South Africa
About NBDA: The National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) is the leading advocacy organization for thousands of Black Deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. The Mission of the National Black Deaf Advocates is to promote the leadership development, economic and educational opportunities, social equality, and to safeguard the general health and welfare of Black deaf and hard of hearing people.
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