AN IRISH JOKE?

Ryanair Slammed for Questioning South Africa Passengers—in Afrikaans

Airline says it’s trying to weed out fraudulent passports, but critics say Afrikaans is the language of the era of white-minority apartheid rule.

Nelson Mandela must be turning in his grave. The Irish airline Ryanair is trying to catch out passengers with fraudulent passports by making everyone boarding a flight for South Africa fill in a special quiz in Afrikaans—widely reviled as the language imposed under apartheid. Afrikaans is now one of South Africa's 11 official languages, but according to a 2011 census is only spoken by 13 percent of the population. The BBC reported that the quiz contains general-knowledge questions, such as what is South Africa’s international dialing code and what is its capital city. “Due to the high prevalence of fraudulent South African passports, we require passengers traveling to the U.K. to fill out a simple questionnaire issued in Afrikaans,” Ryanair said. “If they are unable to complete this questionnaire, they will be refused travel and issued with a full refund.”