Has Oprah gone batty?

Is this going to lead to everybody having their DNA tested?

Oprah Winfrey, the American chat show host, startled a South African audience and baffled historians by claiming to be of Zulu ancestry.

She told 3,200 fans at her Live Your Best Life seminar in Johannesburg: "I went in search of my roots and had my DNA tested and I am a Zulu."

The television celebrity, making her fourth visit to South Africa within a year, has a wide following in the country, where her show is aired on national television.

Local historians, however, were disinclined to believe her claim, as there are few records of the Zulus having any connection to the African slave trade. "If there were Zulu people taken as slaves they would have been taken eastwards by Arab traders or Portuguese to their South American colonies," said one.

"Those who ended up in North America, say in Mississippi where Miss Winfrey comes from, were mostly of West African origin."