REHAD Desai's reported comment that "black people did not belong in South Africa since the Khoisan were the true owners of the land and its wealth", Sowetan August 12, is the most ridiculous statement by a person from whose erudition one would have expected better.

REHAD Desai's reported comment that "black people did not belong in South Africa since the Khoisan were the true owners of the land and its wealth", Sowetan August 12, is the most ridiculous statement by a person from whose erudition one would have expected better.

So I was wondering how the intellectuals in attendance in the reported event, including Andile Mngxitama, responded to this historical fallacy.

If we were to follow the consistency of Desai's argument, no single group of people sharing kinship could lay claim to any piece of land under the sun. At some historical point or other, all people, including Germanic tribes of northern Europe, and the so-called Aryan invaders of India, moved from different areas to settle elsewhere under the doctrine of necessity.

For instance, the English are not autochthonous to the British Isles, just as the Arabs are not autochthonously African.

It follows then that this specious argument seeks to de-legitimate the historical claim of black South Africans to their right to South Africa.

The present African borders result from the Berlin Conference of the 1800s, where European powers partitioned the African continent, not according to the peculiarities and historical realities of this continent, but consistent with their self-interests.

So this a-historical cast of mind by Desai leaves one wondering what his true agenda is, given that he is no stranger to the historical facts above!

Dan Motaung, Tembisa