PRETORIA, South Africa – An estimated 100,000 South Africans lined up in Pretoria to view Nelson Mandela in his casket, but about a third of the overwhelming crowd was sent away without being able to file past the bier.
Many of the frustrated mourners fought back tears of disappointment on the third and last day of the revered leader’s lying in state. Mandela’s coffin was taken away by a military guard to 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria. The anti-apartheid icon will be flown Saturday to his rural home in Qunu where he will be buried Sunday.
Hundreds of people cheered and some burst into song when Mandela’s cortege left Pretoria’s Union Buildings, the seat of government, for the last time Friday evening.
“It was amazing,” said Keneilwe Mohapi, who stood with her mother as the impressive motorcade went by. “We couldn’t ask for a more fitting end. It’s an honor to say goodbye to him properly.
“We’re mourning, but I’m grateful,” the 27-year-old said. “He changed my life.”
Many waited under a hot sun for four or five hours in a line snaking through an open field to busses that would take the lucky ones to see Mandela.
“I feel like I’ve lost a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said 22-year-old student Caiphus Ramushun. “I’m frustrated because I got so close,” he added, saying he was only about 100 people away from making it to the buildings.
“I spent eight hours in line. I came so close to going on. Instead I was turned away,” he said.
Mandela’s body was on display since Wednesday, with larger and larger crowds trying to view it each day. About 70,000 mourners were able to file past the casket Friday, government spokeswoman Phumla Williams said.
But Friday’s surge overwhelmed planners, who were not able to move people through security checkpoints and onto busses quickly enough.
Officials were handing out water to those waiting. The area where people stood in line was so crowded that it became a city-within-a-city: Entrepreneurs set up barbecue grills and sold Mandela memorabilia, including T-shirts imprinted with his smiling face and words: “May he rest in peace.”
Shortly before Mandela’s casket was removed and taken to a nearby military hospital, a crowd of several hundred mourners eager to pay their last respects broke through police barriers and raced up toward the Union Buildings.
An AP reporter witnessed the crowd storming up the hill toward Mandela’s casket and police then chased them over several hundred meters before being able to stop them.
The people were joyous as they raced toward a temporary structure where Mandela was on view in his coffin. No violence erupted as police peacefully brought them back in line, according to the reporter.
Earlier in the day people also pushed open a police gate. Some fell to the ground as the crowd surged, and several were slightly injured. The government closed all nearby parking facilities around midday because of the huge crowds.
Many people said they were bitterly upset and some said the government had done a poor planning job.
“I don’t think this government understands what Mandela means to so many people,” said Ali Ndlovu, a 47-year-old telecoms technician who stood in line for several hours before being turned back. “If they understood, they would have given us more than three days. I’m just very disappointed.”
Some of those who succeeded in viewing the body wept at the sight of the revered anti-apartheid leader in a coffin. A clear bubble allowed people to see his upper body with white hair, a gaunt face and dressed in one of his trademark colorful shirts.
Mourner Elizabeth Leening said she got up at 3 a.m. and headed toward the Union Buildings an hour later to pay her last respects to Mandela.
“We have been standing in the queue now for four hours to see Madiba,” she said, using Mandela’s clan name as a sign of affection and respect.
Mandela, who was jailed for 27 years during white rule and later became South Africa’s first black president, died Dec. 5 in his Johannesburg home after a long illness at the age of 95. He will be buried in a state funeral in his remote childhood home, Qunu, in the southeast of the country on Sunday.
Britain’s Prince Charles, some African leaders and celebrities like Oprah Winfrey are expected to attend the burial with Mandela family members and South African leaders.
Associated Press writer Juergen Baetz in Johannesburg contributed reporting.
New claims emerge about interpreter
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s government was confronted Friday with a new and chilling allegation about the bogus sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial: He was reportedly accused of murder 10 years ago.
Officials said they were investigating the revelation by the national eNCA TV news station. But they were unable, or unwilling, to explain why a man who says he is schizophrenic with violent tendencies was allowed to get within arm’s length of President Barack Obama and other world leaders.
Investigators probing Thamsanqa Jantjie “will compile a comprehensive report,” said Phumla Williams, a government spokeswoman.
But she did not say how long the investigation would take and insisted details would not be released until it was completed.
“We are not going to sweep it under the carpet,” Williams said. “We want to own up if there is a mistake, but we don’t want to be dishonest” to Jantjie.
An Associated Press reporter found Jantjie at a makeshift bar owned by his cousin on the outskirts of Soweto Friday, near his concrete house close to shacks and an illegal dump where goats pick at grass between the trash. Asked about the murder allegation, Jantjie turned and walked away without saying anything.
A day earlier, he told the AP that he had been violent “a lot” in the past, has schizophrenia and hallucinated during the Mandela memorial that angels were descending into the stadium. He also apologized for his performance, but defended his interpreting as “the best in the world.”
His assertion was ridiculed by deaf advocates who said he didn’t know how to sign “Mandela” or “thank you.”
The outcome of the reported murder case that eNCA said dated from 2003 was unclear, and the television report did not disclose any details.
Officials at the Johannesburg court where the murder charge was reportedly lodged were not in their offices Friday afternoon and did not respond to email requests seeking comment.
There were no records of a murder case involving Jantjie at South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority, but spokesman Nathi Mncube said that doesn’t necessarily mean Jantjie was never a suspect.
“I cannot confirm that the guy was charged, but I cannot deny it, either,” he said. “There are no records right now.”
Jantjie also faced other lesser criminal charges in the past, eNCA reported. In the interview with the AP, he blamed his past violent episodes on his schizophrenia, but declined to provide details.
The fiasco surrounding the use of Jantjie to provide sign language translation before a worldwide television audience has turned into an international embarrassment for South Africa, whose ruling party, the African National Congress, and president, Jacob Zuma, have already lost popularity because of corruption scandals and other public grievances. But the ANC is far more powerful than the opposition and Zuma, who was booed at the Mandela memorial, is likely to be its candidate in elections next year.
The U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Friday that “we’re all very upset” about Jantjie, who was just 3 feet from Obama at the memorial service for Mandela, who died Dec. 5 at 95.
Thomas-Greenfield told reporters in Kenya that U.S. officials are concerned about security and how Jantjie could have gotten so close to world leaders. She said officials were also dismayed because people watching around the world who needed sign language weren’t able to understand what was said at the ceremony. She called the problem “extraordinarily sad.”
South Africa’s arts and culture minister, Paul Mashatile, apologized for the use of Jantjie on Friday, marking the second apology from the government in two days, and said reforms must be implemented to ensure such an incident doesn’t happen again.
“Without passing judgment, nobody should be allowed to undermine our languages. We sincerely apologize to the deaf community and to all South Africans for any offense that may have been suffered,” Mashatile said in a statement.
He did not comment on who was responsible for hiring the sign interpreter.
Four government departments involved in organizing the historic memorial service distanced themselves from the hiring of Jantjie, telling the AP they had no contact with him.
A fifth government agency, the Department of Public Works, declined comment and referred all inquiries about Jantjie to Williams’ office.
Williams said the investigation would include trying to determine who hired Jantjie or the company he said he worked for. She did not say how long the probe might take, and police spokesman Lt. Gen. Solomon Mogale said there would be no additional information released until after Mandela’s funeral Sunday in his hometown of Qunu.
The government is also trying to determine how Jantjie received security clearance and what vetting of his background – if any – took place. Officials at the State Security Agency, in charge of security for the event, have not commented publicly and by Friday had not responded to questions submitted by email a day earlier by the AP.
The government says the owners of the interpreting company have disappeared, and the AP was unable to track down the school where Jantjie said he studied signing for a year. An online search for the school, which Jantjie said was called Komani and located in Eastern Cape Province, turned up nothing.
Ingrid Parkin, principal of the St. Vincent School for the Deaf in Johannesburg, said she and other advocates for the deaf had never heard of the school. She added that there are no known sign language institutes in the province.
The Star newspaper of Johannesburg reported Friday that Jantjie said he studied sign language interpretation in Britain at the “University of Tecturers.”
“We’re not aware of that university,” said Emma Mortimer, communications director of Signature, a charity that awards qualifications in deaf and deaf-blind communication techniques.
Even if he had studied in the United Kingdom, Mortimer said that wouldn’t necessarily qualify him to work in South Africa because the country’s two sign languages are different.
“It would be like you going to France and speaking English,” she said.
Associated Press writers Tendai Musiya and Gerald Imray in Johannesburg, Danica Kirka in London and Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.
