Southern Africa Unexplained

Case · UFO Afrinews No 6, July 1992

The orange light over the Lomagundi Road (Hind's own 1975 sighting)

1975 · Lomagundi Road, Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe

What was reported

Hind admits she has never seen a UAP herself, but recalls that during the 1975 flap, about 9 p.m. on a cold winter night with petrol rationed, she and Leslie and Maria Sullivan followed a turning light some 300 metres up for about 20 miles down the Lomagundi Road. Through powerful binoculars it was only a bright light with some attachment, slowly revolving to a dark side, and they turned back for want of petrol. Newspapers had called the 'orange light' a partial eclipse of Mars, a Mazoe orange or a UAP. Charles Prince Airport suggested marker flares from pilots spraying quelea birds at night, which later proved unfeasible. Recently a businessman confessed that as a schoolboy he helped launch a balloon carrying a light to pull people's legs, which Hind now finds the most plausible answer.

What Hind made of it

Hind accepts the schoolboys' balloon confession as the most plausible explanation and says that seventeen years on it no longer matters to her belief system, since she is convinced something is going on that governments keep secret.

Explanation offered
partial eclipse of Mars; Mazoe orange; crop-spraying marker flare (found unfeasible); schoolboy prank balloon bearing a light

In their words

  • could see no more than a bright light with some sort of attachment, slowly revolving to a dark side

    Cynthia Hind, spread 03

  • To me theirs was the most plausible explanation!

    Cynthia Hind, spread 03

Cross references

  • 1975 flap
  • Charles Prince Airport
  • Met office

Connected

  • UAP Flap in ZimbabweCase fileSame witness

    Hind herself and Maria Sullivan are observers in both: the 1975 Lomagundi Road orange light they followed by car, and the sonic boom Hind heard in Harare at 21:04 on 14 September 1994. Both are the investigator's own household.

  • JB and the intriguing tie-up with the 'Hoax'Case fileSame window

    Both in what Hind calls the 1975 flap: JB's brother 'confirmed reports of something over Harare' that weekend, and Hind's own orange light down the Lomagundi Road was on a cold winter night around 9 pm with petrol rationed. Rhodesia was at war and Salisbury's air base was busy at night.

  • Harare, Chisipite: orange pulsating sphere over the shopsCase fileSame behaviour

    Orange light over Salisbury drifting slowly, rising above trees, then dwindling to a dot: New Year's Eve 1974 over Chisipite (11 pm, crowd watching) and winter 1975 on the Lomagundi Road. Hind accepted a confessed schoolboy prank balloon carrying a light for 1975; nobody has tested it against the Chisipite sphere seven months earlier, on a night when fireworks and pranks are routine.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 6 (July 1992), spread 03

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