Nelson Mandela's death was not unexpected, as he had been ill and frail for some time, and absent from public life. Predictions of the confusion that would reign after his death, and the fears of lawlessness that would descend on the country, implied that it was Mandela himself who held the country together. Events around his death and funeral reinforced this sense of meaning being lost, the present becoming unreadable and the future uncertain. During the last months of his life, when he was already too ill to perform any public duties, striking mineworkers were shot at by security police at Marikana, who killed at least 34 and wounded a further 78 or more (see Alexander et al. 2012). The backdrop to the news of Mandela's death in December 2013 was the aftermath of these other deaths, and the struggles of families, mostly from the Eastern Cape Province, to pay for the burial of the men who had lost their lives. In the next months, South Africans witnessed the beginnings of what would come to be known as the #Fallist movement, the term Fallist being derived from the call for the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the campus of the University of Cape Town to ‘fall’, and later for tuition fees to be adjusted for students who were unable to afford a university education. These events were seemingly unconnected to the ‘transition’ narrative of South Africa under Mandela, as if the present became – to many – unreadable.

The threat of meaninglessness was given form in a surprising way at Mandela's state funeral, when a sign language interpreter translated speakers’ words into a language that other sign language users neither recognised nor understood. South African sign language communities have strong histories of activism and advocacy, and the inclusion of the sign language interpreter was a gesture in line with the ideals of the Rainbow Nation and the explicit and performed diversity associated with the celebrated constitution. The presence of an interpreter who was speaking a language that no one else could understand (he was speaking ‘rubbish’, other sign language speakers commented) caused embarrassment to the ANC and to the organisers of the funeral.