ABSTRACT
He stood, with a deadpan expression, just inches from President Barack Obama and other world leaders speaking at Nelson Mandela’s memorial. Dressed in a dark suit, with a blue security lanyard bearing the words ‘state funeral’ draped around his neck, he flapped his arms and gesticulated in what was supposed to be sign language for the deaf (Eligon 2013). However, as The New York Times tells us, the man was a fraud, an impostor who pulled off a shocking stunt. His constant presence on the stage of the memorial of Nelson Mandela was watched not only by the audience in the 93,000-seat soccer stadium in Soweto but also by hundreds of millions on television around the world (Eligon 2013).
