South Africa

Ryanair Drops Afrikaans Test

JUN 8 2022·Updated SEP 20 2022

#South Africa

Story

Image credit: AFP/Getty Images [via NBC News]

The Facts

Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary announced on Tues. that the airline has dropped a controversial requirement for South African travelers to take a quiz in Afrikaans to prove their nationality, which the SA government had labeled a "backward profiling system."
Al Jazeera
Last week, the Dublin-based budget airline confirmed the policy, saying it aimed to block passengers holding fraudulent South African passports from traveling to the UK. Ryanair mainly flies within Europe and has no routes to or from South Africa.
NBC
The company had stressed that it must pay around $2.5K in fines per passenger arriving in the UK on fake documents. The UK High Commission in South Africa, however, noted that the test isn't required by the UK government.
CNN
This comes as the South African government struggles to tackle schemes that fraudulently sell passports to foreign nationals.
guardian
While Afrikaans is one of South Africa's 11 official languages, only 13% of the population have it as their mother tongue.
NBC
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that was instituted and imposed on black South Africans during apartheid rule.
CNN

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

South Africa's identity system can no longer be trusted due to fraudulent schemes that sell South African documents to foreign nationals. This is just the first example of what the nation's travelers may have to face if authorities cannot better ensure the credibility of documents.

SowetanLIVE

Narrative B

This was an unjustified and discriminatory measure. Afrikaans, the language of the racist apartheid rulers, is only the third most spoken in the country. South Africa is working to put a stop to fraudulent schemes and has even allowed airlines to use its systems to verify the authenticity of documents.