Ryanair Requirements South African passport holders have passed tests written in Afrikaans, a language with a racist heritage that many South Africans do not speak, and have been widely criticized for their policies being discriminatory and meaningless. Later, prove your nationality before boarding a particular flight.
The company emailed Wednesday confirming that the quiz would no longer be used, Statement by the Chief Executive Officer, Michael O’Reilly, “It doesn’t make sense.” The comment was first reported by the BBC.
South Africans were angry with the language-dependent tests that the former white-led apartheid government imposed on the country’s black majority. Today, Afrikaans is 13%, the third most widely used home language in the country.
“They really offended the whole country,” said Dinesh Joseph, a 45-year-old South African leadership and management trainer who had to pass the test to return to London from the Canary Islands.
Ryanair’s face comes when South Africans prepare Thursday to commemorate a critical moment of resistance to Afrikaans: The Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in 1976. school. Police fired at protesters and killed hundreds of people.
The racist heritage of this language has resonated with many in South Africa. In South Africa, Zulu is spoken in more households (23%) than any of the country’s more than 10 official languages. (English is the home language of 8 percent of South Africans.)
Some South African travelers reported being shocked and humiliated by the test requirements.Many South Africans Expressed their frustration On social media, Ryanair’s racists and even Call for an airline boycott..
Despite the complaint, Ryanair upheld the test requirements for weeks, saying it was done for a flight to the UK due to the “high prevalence” of fraudulent passports from South Africa. Dublin-based low-cost carriers also characterized the quiz as a “simple survey.” It asked travelers to name things like animals in South Africa’s largest cities and countries. Those who do not answer correctly will be denied boarding and will be refunded.
The South African government has announced a recent incident of passport fraud, but was critical of Ryanair’s tactics, saying airlines could access a system to verify the authenticity of passports.
South Africa’s Interior Minister spokesman Siya Qoza said in a statement last week that she was “surprised by the airline’s decision,” adding that the test was a “backward profiling system.”
Ryanair does not say why he chose Afrikaans as the test language. And Mr. O’Leary called the South African government’s profiling claims “garbage” and expressed little remorse for the policy. According to Reuters..
“Our team has published a test of 12 simple questions in Afrikaans, including the names of mountains outside Pretoria,” he said at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday. “They have no problem completing it.”
Joseph called Ryanair’s reversal a “bittersweet victory.” The airline was taking a step in the right direction, he said, but he complained about the lack of accountability for what he called “insanely discriminatory” practices.
Growing up English-speaking Joseph passed the test with the help of Google Translate, but Ryanair needs to be aware of the emotional distress caused by the policy, he said.
“I would like to apologize to those who certainly had to experience it, and to the South African people in general,” he said.
