When travelling abroad, you would think your passport would be the most important thing needed to prove your country of origin. However, this came into question when an airline group, Ryanair, forced South African citizens to take a general knowledge quiz, in Afrikaans, apparently in order to "prove" that they were South African.

According to iol, over the past two weeks several accounts have surfaced on social media about travellers who complained that they were forced to write a test to prove they were South African.

Apparently not knowing the country’s official colour, the side of the road that we drive on or the capital city could mark you as a security risk and leave you stranded in a foreign country.

Capetonian Dinesh Joseph, who has lived in London since 2016, spent five fabulous days enjoying himself in Lanzarote in the Spanish Canary Islands.  

However, he said the good times were forgotten even before he left the island when a Ryanair official told him to take his boarding pass to their customer services desk to be stamped.

Joseph, a leadership and management trainer in the UK, said what happened next left him fuming.

“They took my passport and my boarding pass and handed me two photocopied pages with questions in Afrikaans that were printed skew. There was no letterhead, no logo or stamp, nothing to prove it was an official document.”

He was told he didn't have a choice in the matter because it was a “Ryanair rule” that South African travellers had to follow, even though he told them he could not speak Afrikaans and would have to google the answers.

“Luckily my primary school memories kicked in,” he said.

Joseph said he was extremely angry that they treated him as if he was “a monkey”, while his girlfriend, who is from the UK, was left gobsmacked.

Below is the "test question" used for entry into the UK by Ryanair. How many of these do you think you can answer? To read more on this article, click here.

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