Andries Coetzee, linguistics professor and director of the African Studies Center, is quoted in The Washington Post in a recent article on European airline Ryanair’s requirement that South African customers prove their citizenship by taking a written test in Afrikaans.
Coetzee called Ryanair’s testing requirement “colonial, discriminatory and just unjustified.”
Coetzee said the majority of South Africans do not speak Afrikaans, “so, it makes absolutely no sense to use that as a measurement of whether you are South African or not.”
He also said it would be accurate to say that 80 percent of the population of South Africa do not speak Afrikaans, and that 80 percent are basically all non-White.”
Read the article: The Washington Post
