UFO Afrinews

History

Cynthia Hind launched UFO Afrinews in July 1988 from P.O. Box MP 49, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. By that point she had spent twenty years investigating sightings across southern and eastern Africa, working alone in a region where no UFO research infrastructure existed. The publication cost Z$4.50 locally, R5.00 in South Africa, US$4.00 internationally, and £2.00 in Britain, where Lionel Beer of 15 Freshwater Court, Crawford Street, London served as stockist.

Hind built a correspondents network spanning the continent: Prier Wintle, David Pawell, Fatima Mayet, Nathan Middeldorf, and C.J. Rouse in South Africa; Chris Ptaszynski in Britain. Maria Sullivan served as assistant editor from the second issue onward. Hind also worked as MUFON's continental coordinator for Africa and attended the 1987 MUFON Conference in Washington DC, where exposure to Budd Hopkins' abduction research prompted her to seek out similar cases among African witnesses.

Her investigative focus shifted over the years from cataloguing lights-in-the-sky reports to concentrating on physical trace cases and close encounters, particularly those involving multiple witnesses. She used Dr Willy Smith's computer programme in Florida for pattern analysis of her case database. The publication ran for 21 issues until Hind's death in 2000, documenting cases from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, and other countries that no other English-language researcher was covering.