Cynthia Hind was born in South Africa and studied at Cape Town University until World War II, when she served with the South African WAAF. She then moved to England, where she lived for eleven years.
She has written numerous short stories for radio, including the BBC, as well as many articles on a variety of subjects. She has been interested in UFOs for seventeen years, and is the author of UFOs African Encounters (Gemini, Zimbabwe 1982).
Cynthia Hind has traveled all over the world as a UFO researcher, and is the MUFON Coordinator for Africa. She lives in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: Testimony from Africa – CYNTHIA HIND
It has always been important for me to prove that Africa is an excellent example of the evidence for the existence of UFOs. The reason for this is that so many people have had interesting experiences and reported case histories, when I know that the vast majority are totally unexposed to media influence or interpretation.
It is true that although television is affordable only by the more affluent, neighbors, friends, and family do share the viewing. My domestic staff cf three, for example, whom I have provided with a TV set, will often have ten or twelve persons to watch with them. Nevertheless, it is a very limited audience out of the eight million people in my country (Zimbabwe) alone, and the choice of program veers more toward Mavengwevengwe (local music) or Makadoka (a sit-comedy) than, say, Star Trek or V. And even then, the viewing is limited to the towns and not the rural areas.
With regard to radio broadcasts, the listening public is divided between a station broadcasting continual pop mu sic and programs in the vernacular. The English language programs, although including sophisticated science pro grams from the BBC as well as some locally produced, are seldom listened to by the rural population, who obviously prefer programs in their own dialect.
I have kept a watching brief of programs over the past few years. Astrology, UFOs, and some paranormal sub jects are dealt with on an irregular basis but always in English only. With reference to UFO books, there is an absolute dearth of these in Africa-perhaps with the exception of South Africa. Most African countries are in tight economic straits, and although some countries do import books from abroad, I can almost guarantee that no allocation will be made for the purchase of books dealing with UFOs. It would be an interesting exercise to find out from British publishing houses wbat percentage of the most re cent UFO books ever found their way to English-speaking Africa.
On examination of the evidence, I want to make it clear that although people are never liberally exposed to UFO lore or its case histories, there is always the off-chance that people might hear something in this connection. Thus, even though I have stated that UFO witnesses are never exposed to pre-knowledge of the UFO syndrome, there is always · the remote possibility that some type of contact has been established. I say all this in deference to the more skeptical students of Ufology.
Like the Brazilians, the African people have in their culture many references to vadzimu (spirits), such as shave, Mudzimu, Ngoza, all of whom must, to them, emanate from “somewhere above. ” Therefore, it should not be difficult for the people to relate to entities from other worlds, be they physical planets or even another dimension .
But it is the concept of “outer space” which is daunting. With the rural African people, measurements relate in terms of the next village or the nearest big town. To explain “overseas” is difficult; to explain “outer space” even more so. Many have never viewed the open sea and the largest expanse of water they have seen is an inland lake, where the opposite shore is often clearly visible, for example, Lake Malawi, Lake Kariba, Lake Victoria. As to visiting the moon or other planets, ”Only God can walk on the moon” they say.
If one stops in the country to ask one’s way, your informant will look at you first. If you appear tired and weary, dripping with perspiration and fatigue, he will say, “It is not far, a few more turns in the road, ” despite the fact that your destination might be many kilometers away. On the other hand, if it is a beautifully cool, brilliant day, and you are fit and eager, he will describe in minute detail every tum of the road, every identification on the way, happily wishing you a long and rewarding journey. It is in the African culture to say what pleases you most, so one has to be especially careful during investigations to put your question in such a way that you can elicit an accurate reply, as opposed to what the witness feels you want to hear.
Another point I find significant is the short memory of the rural people about matters which they deem unimportant. UFOs are unimportant. The African, on the whole, does not understand the concept of UFOs nor their impact on civilization. It does not matter to him that the entities emerging from strange machines might be from another world. They are not part of his culture. He does not relate to them, and aside from his immediate fear of their strangeness, they are entirely irrelevant to his life style.
I feel that, unlike a UFO experience for an average British family, who would probably recall events in terrifying detail for the rest of their lives, the rural African is more involved with production, procreation and possible promises of a better life. And indeed, who can blame him?
In Dr. Roberto Pinotti’s excellent paper Contact: Re leasing The News, which he presented at the IAF Congress in Brighton on October 15, 1987, he gives his reasons on why governments have not informed the public of the existence of UFOs.
He speaks of ” ET and Culture Shock, ” and to me this would be a deciding factor, certainly in relation to the African continent. We all relate to our own particular culture. Although we know that we are not the center of the Universe, “we are central in essence, ” he says. Anything widely divorced from our own familiarities, our own dreams of what and who we are, is foreign; more so to the unsophisticated who are barely aware of the greater and lesser societies on our own Earth Pinotti says:
“from the cultural point of view, their contact with Europeans castrated African and pre-Colombian societies, destroying most of their original age-old characteristics: from their practical everyday life to their version of the world and its existence. It was culture shock they had to face; and their technology, their science, their economy, their religion , their philosophy and their ethics , disintegrated against the structure of the European civilization”.
How true that is.
Although I cannot always be sure that the rural African people I interview have never heard of craft from outer space, at least I know that whatever they have heard , it would be extremely superficial , with a lack of understanding; a mere peripheral acknowledgment that there may be something untoward coming from out of our skies.