Southern Africa Unexplained

Case No 75 · UFO Afrinews No 8, Sept. 1993

More Lights in the Sky, Zimbabwe: Esigodini

1992 · Esigodini, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

What was reported

At about 20:00 on 27 April 1992 several people at Esigodini, south of Bulawayo, saw a bright elliptical object with a dark body cross the sky from east to west at a 45-degree angle on a clear, warm, silent night. It carried a reddish light at the front and yellow at the rear, though one witness reversed the colours, and it vanished behind trees or, said the last witness, went out like an electric light. Sipho Moyo, cooking, saw her whole yard light up, shut the door and thought it moved slowly over two or three minutes; Mlungisi Ndhlovu saw it from the main road; Mpilo Mzizi, making a fire, felt light surround her and saw a pulsing red and yellow star for seconds. Franz Kurt Schmidt, a trainee game guide 30 km away, saw a yellow flash like sheet lightning half an hour earlier in drizzle and thunder. MUFORG interviewed all four.

What Hind made of it

Hind considers an auroral meteor possible but notes its usual greenish-white colour against the reported yellow, orange and red, and is struck by the 30-minute discrepancy between Schmidt and the village witnesses, which reminds her of a Pinetown case.

Explanation offered
Auroral or low-level meteor considered

In their words

  • the last witness said that it went out like an electric light

    Cynthia Hind, spread 16

  • Twenty minutes difference and only so short a distance apart? There's obviously something that whets the appetite here!

    Cynthia Hind, spread 18

Cross references

  • MUFORG Matabeleland UFO Research Group
  • Pinetown case near Durban
  • Sipho Moyo's drawing

Connected

  • Foul-Smelling UAP? (Matobo blue object)Case fileNamed person

    Sipho Moyo (Esigodini, April 1992) and Mrs Moyo (Tsmalyemba, January 1997) share only the commonest Ndebele surname; the places are 23 km apart and the events five years apart. A name collision to be discounted, not a link.

  • Bulawayo reports gathered by Vivienne PascoeCase fileSame behaviour

    Both are silent, multi-witness luminous bodies crossing the sky with coloured lights front and rear or trailing (reddish front, yellow rear, pulsing; golden front light with green, orange and yellow tails and following star-like objects), both were collected by the Matabeleland group (MUFORG interviewed all four in 1992; Vivienne Pascoe gathered the 1994 reports), and both have a meteor or re-entry shape. The two best-attested events in the cluster.

  • GMC's fireball on the Matopos Road: date corrected to 1988Case fileSame behaviour

    Fast luminous object crossing low with a trail, meteor offered in both (by description for GMC's quarter-second greenish fireball on 7 May 1988; by Hind for Esigodini on 27 April 1992). Different years, both in late April or early May, which is not a known shower peak for the southern sky; treated as coincidence.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 8 (Sept. 1993), spread 16-18

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