VIDEO: "If you're South African, let's hear you speak Afrikaans!"

Groete aan al ons Suid-Afrikaanse lesers! Long-time readers of WWW may remember that I spent the better part of the `90s in southern Africa, chiefly in Zimbabwe with forays into the Republiek van Suid-Afrika / Republic of South Africa. 

I was there for the transition from "white settler rule" or "the apartheid regime" to "majority rule" or the "new South Africa" -- the original rainbow nation.

In the bad old days (prior to the worse latter days) the country had two official languages, Afrikaans and English. Afrikaans is a simplified -- some would say degraded -- form of the Dutch which was spoken by the original European settlers in the 17th century. 

It is not a hard language for English-speakers to learn and pronounce, although the English, being English, mostly refused to make the effort. Most native speakers of Afrikaans are able to speak English. When they do, their accent sounds like that of the bad guys in Lethal Weapon II.

One of our agents, who amuses himself by trolling dating sites and chat rooms looking for fake profiles, says that he often sees (black) Africans from such fraud hotspots as Nigeria and Ghana claiming to speak Afrikaans, thinking that the word refers to an African language. Apparently they do this also, to prove their citizenship, when using fake South African passports to board flights to the UK/Europe and North America.

This is the reason why discount airline Ryanair has started requiring South African passengers to prove their nationality before travelling by completing a test in Afrikaans, even though that language is now used by just by 12% of the country's population. 

The Irish airline does not operate flight to/from South Africa, but says that says any UK-bound passengers flying to the UK from another part of Europe must fill in a "simple questionnaire" due to what it describes as a high prevalence of fraudulent South African passports. "If they are unable to complete this questionnaire," a Ryanair spokesthingy told the meeja, "they will be refused travel and issued with a full refund."

What an interesting idea! Wonder what would happen if the Brandon administration ordered guards along America's southern border to demand that all those African and south Asian-looking people claiming to be "refugees" from Mexico and Central America prove they can speak Spanish!

VIDEO ADDED 7/6/22: Ed. forgot to embed this video of Susanna Heystek playing "Bowing the Strings". This is a Canadian fiddle tune (written by Ned Landry), played in Canada by Ms Heystek -- 15 years old at the time -- whose Afrikaaner family immigrated to Canada from "the new South Africa".

  

The wildlife images are from South Africa, where the Heystek family were prosperous Boers (that's Afrikaans for "farmers"). They left that all behind to come to what they thought was the Great White North. Hope they haven't been too disappointed!