PATRICK BULGER | Eish and eina: Ryanair’s Afrikaans test casts awkward spotlight on languages and politics in SA
In its haste to disown Afrikaans, state skirts broader point about the confusion and wastage from our official-language choices
09 June 2022 - 19:56
Irish budget airline Ryanair’s cheap ’n nasty Afrikaans-language “nationality test’’ is a surreal flashback to the “dompas” and the pencil-in-the-hair tests that made apartheid a cause of needless suffering and provided endless opportunity to lampoon the racist bureaucracy that upheld the regime and its rules. And just in that sentence you already have two Afrikaans words, the most infamous of which, apartheid, has become the universal byword for oppression. Put that in your test, Ryanair!..
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