Ryanair says it has introduced the 15-question test to tackle ‘high prevalence in fraudulent South African passports’
(Picture: PA Wire)Ryanair has been accused of racial profiling by making South Africans take a general knowledge test in Afrikaans to prove their nationality before being allowed to board its flights.
The airline says it has introduced the 15-question test to tackle “high prevalence in fraudulent South African passports”.
However South African travellers have complained the experience has left them feeling humiliated and accused the airline of racial discrimination.
Afrikaans is one of 11 official languages in South Africa and is only spoken by about 14 per cent of the population.
Dinesh Joseph, who speaks English, was asked to complete the test to get back to London from his holiday in Lanzarote last month. He told the Metro the test felt like “profiling and discrimination”.
He said he was told “this is your language” when he asked for a form in English.
“We have a strong past. I’m a person of colour. There’s a certain unconscious triggering that happens,” he said.
“It is super callous and insensitive of them to pick one particular language.”
Catherine Bronze said she and her 11-year-old son Kolby were barred from their flight back home to Essex at West Knock Airport in Ireland.
“It was the first time I felt like I was being discriminated against for something out of my control - because it was immediately assumed that my passport was wrong,” she said.
“I know it sounds ridiculous but it actually felt traumatic, everyone was looking at me and I cried a lot.”
She said they only made it back to the UK two days later after her husband, who holds a UK passport, came to fetch them and travelled with them from Dublin Airport.
Zinhle Novazi, a South African in the UK who does not normally speak Afrikaans, was made to take the test to board a flight from Ibiza last week. She told the Financial Times “it is extremely exclusionary... they didn’t think about the implications” of the test in light of South Africa’s history and how Afrikaans was perceived as a “white” language under apartheid.
Others took to social media to share their disgust.
“This is #Apartheid 2.0. Unbelievable,” Victor Kattan, a senior research fellow at Nottingham University, wrote on Twitter.
The questionnaire includes questions like which side of the road South Africans drive on and the name of the country’s highest mountain.
In a statement, Ryanair confirmed the policy, saying: “We require passengers travelling to the UK to fill out a simple questionnaire issued in Afrikaans. If they are unable to complete this questionnaire, they will be refused travel and issued with a full refund.”
