South Africans travelling to Ireland and the UK were reportedly forced to fill in a questionnaire in Afrikaans to prove their citizenship.
Picture: Flickr Commons/ Eliane Kobayakawa
Frustrated travellers shared their experiences on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, posting images of the Afrikaans questionnaire.
One passenger and her 11-year-old son were refused entry after getting three out of the 15 questions wrong, according to a Facebook post in a group for South Africans in London.
UK blocking South Africans at airports unless they pass Afrikaans test…… pass or else!??. pic.twitter.com/t2ziFCXn0A
— NaTiki Nation. (@JrNatiki) June 3, 2022
In another incident, a South African travelling from Ireland to the UK was told that the Irish government had introduced the Afrikaans test because of an increase in fraudulent South African passports.
But the British High Commission in South Africa posted that the questionnaire was not a requirement of the UK government. The Irish Embassy stated in a response to Daily Maverick: ‘We are happy to clarify that the Irish immigration authorities do not under any circumstances require or administer such tests to passengers travelling to Ireland.’
It turned out that the test was a requirement of the low-cost airline, Ryanair, which said that, ‘under Section 40 of the UK Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, Ryanair has a responsibility to ensure that passengers are correctly documented for travel to their destination.
‘Due to the recent increase in passengers attempting to travel on fraudulent South African passports, our handling agents may request passengers travelling on a South African passport and who are flagged during procedural security profiling, to complete a simple questionnaire, as an additional safety assessment to confirm whether they are correctly documented before travel. As language proficiency is the least intrusive further safety assessment method, this questionnaire is conducted through Afrikaans, one of South Africa’s most prevalent official languages.’
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