Okay, before we get hung, drawn and quartered, we need to explain basic geography! And totally ignore the president’s mind-numbingly stupid comment on SABC news.

So how do we find ourselves agreeing with our erstwhile president when the rest of the world #faceplams him?

Well, first we need to accept that different countries and world bodies look at continents differently. In South Africa and a large part of the world, the 7-continent system is taught, with Africa being the second largest – beaten by Asia.

For example, many parts of Europe use the 6-continent system, which would make the Americas the largest continent. In fact, up until World War II, even the US considered both North and South as one continent.

The ideal criterion that each continent be a discrete landmass is commonly relaxed due to historical conventions. Of the 7 most commonly recognised continents, only Antarctica and Australia are completely separated from other continents. Several continents are defined not as absolutely distinct bodies, but as “more or less discrete masses of land”.

Asia and Africa are joined by the Isthmus of Suez, and North and South America by the Isthmus of Panama. In both cases, there is no complete separation of these landmasses by water (disregarding the Suez and Panama Canals, which are both narrow and shallow, as well as being manmade). Both these isthmuses are very narrow compared to the bulk of the landmasses they unite.

North America and South America are treated as separate continents in the 7-continent model. However, they may also be viewed as a single continent, known as America or the Americas. This viewpoint was common in the United States until World War II and remains prevalent in some Asian 6-continent models. This remains the more common vision in Latin American countries – Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece – where they are taught as a single continent.

So, if continents are defined strictly as discrete landmasses, embracing all the contiguous land of a body, then Asia, Europe and Africa form a single continent which may be referred to as Afro-Eurasia. This produces a 4-continent model consisting of Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica and Australia.

While not taught in many schools in never the less is factually correct.

Now we are 100% certain that President Zuma was not referring to Afro-Eurasia when he was talking about Africa being the largest continent (#faceplam), but ironically, in the truest geographical sense of the word, he was 100% correct.

So what have we learnt out of all of this. “Stupidity can still teach you something new!”

Source material