Hoaxers! The Botswana/South African border crash revisited

What was reported

Reprinting Chad Deetken's UAP*BC piece quoting forensic psychologist Mike Berry on the psychology of hoaxers, Hind applies it to James van Greunen's elaborate story of a UAP shot down on the Botswana/South African border. Tony Dodd and the Birdsall brothers of UFO Magazine still believed it, while allowing that Van Greunen might have lied. Hind and Sullivan have since learnt from a South African source close to the episode that even the initial naval-frigate report and the prelude to the shooting were untrue. The source hints the seed may have been a newly developed South African weapon, perhaps a laser, landing over the Botswana border, onto which Van Greunen grafted aliens, alien writing and RAF-ranked pilots. During the affair Hind received an anonymous accented trunk call accusing her of illegal involvement and briefly feared men in black; the caller proved to be a Briton hoping to write a book.

What Hind made of it

Neither a UAP nor a crash; even the naval frigate story was false; the sooner people forget it the better, and Africa should not be blamed for such hoaxes.

Explanation offered
Hoax by James van Greunen, possibly built on a test of a newly developed South African weapon (maybe a laser) that landed over the border.

In their words

• Your Editors, however, know that there was neither a UFO nor a UFO crash

• Let's be wary of hoaxers like this, and not have Africa blamed for denigrating and messing up on UFOs

• Most hoax offenders are lonely, inadequate people who crave attention, however negative

Cross references

• UFO Afrinews No 3 pp 5-13
• UFO Afrinews No 4 pp 20-31
• UFO Afrinews No 5 pp 19-35
• UAP*BC Quarterly Summer 1998
• UFO Magazine (Britain)
• Lesotho crash claim (this issue)

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 19 (January 1999), spread 05, 06-07