A Retraction: the Brenda van der Hoerten story and the tribe from Mars

What was reported

The editors announce that two tabloid-based stories carried in AFRINEWS No 6 (July 1992, pp 17-21) were wholly invented. They had already been uneasy about the Brenda van der Hoerten story: South African contacts found nothing resembling her name in the main telephone directories and no trace of the story in any major newspaper, which, had it really happened, a group such as the Argus papers would hardly have missed. They had run it only because a large-circulation paper had. The second item, about a tribe supposedly from Mars, they had thought far-fetched, though Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery made them wonder whether remnants of an astronomically advanced African tribe might exist. An informant has now confirmed both were fabrications, and the editors apologise for printing them without rigorous checking.

What Hind made of it

Both stories are figments of someone's imagination; the editors apologise for printing them unchecked.

Explanation offered
Fabrication

In their words

• this story too, is a figment of someone's imagination.

• We apologise for even printing the information without rigorous checking, and hope we will be forgiven.

Cross references

• AFRINEWS No 6, July 1992, pp 17-21
• Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 10 (August 1994), spread 20