The Coligny Road-Block Landing and the South African UFO Wave

Wednesday 29 March 1995. Rush hour on the M1 freeway near central Johannesburg. Witnesses counted seven to ten lights, shaped like coins, changing colour. That night at De Brug, west of Bloemfontein, a woman videotaped a hovering object. Police were called at 02:20 and saw a bright light when they arrived.

Thursday 30 March 1995. A remote gravel road between Coligny and Brakspruit, in what was then the Western Transvaal. Jan Pienaar, a 45-year-old farmer, came round a curve. An old man on a bicycle seemed to be shielding his face. "At that exact moment the engine of my brand new, small truck stopped," Pienaar said. About 80 metres ahead stood a huge craft resting on three landing pods.

It covered the entire width of the road and stood about 8 to 9 metres high. He described "two inverted soup plates with a pudding bowl on top." The surface was "translucent and lustrous," like stainless steel, with seven windows or portholes on the upper level. A red-violet-green-yellow glow lit the hull. It "buzzed like a gigantic electric beater."

Then a smaller detail. A dent on the seam around the edge, with a hole of a little less than 2 feet. Pienaar came to believe the craft had landed to have its damaged hull repaired.

"I could not make another step," he said. "It was as though a magnet held me on the same spot." Three to four minutes passed. The legs lifted and folded away. The craft rose like a helicopter, then "sped like lightening on a course toward heaven."

The old man was already pedalling hard down the dusty road and was never identified. The ground where it stood was scorching hot to the touch. A lingering odour hung in the air, almost like chloroform. Pienaar returned with Chap Smit, a farmer from the region, and called the police from a nearby farm. He was told the object had apparently been seen the night before over the northern provinces.

More reports followed. In Pretoria, around 02:00 on 31 March, a 13-year-old saw a round, light-blue glowing object with an inner and an outer ring. At Lindley in the Free State, observers said their digital watches stopped as an object passed. Beeld reported that five Voortrekkers had seen a UFO at camp. Stilbaai and Merweville in the Western Cape also appear on the map of sightings.

Air Force and Weather Bureau spokesmen said there were no aircraft or weather balloons in the areas at the relevant times. Physicist and amateur astronomer Matie Hoffmann suggested "a weather balloon, kite or anything with a sharp light," a remark aimed at the night lights rather than the daylight landing.

Pienaar's accounts in Rapport and Die Burger differ in small ways. The time was reported as 07:30 or 08:30, and the distance as 80 metres or 90. The hull hole appears only in Rapport, the folding legs only in Die Burger. No beings were reported. No hoax finding or published rebuttal has surfaced.

FIGU Bulletin 003 reprinted the Rapport article, and UFO Evidence lists the case among its landings. Grokipedia confuses it with the earlier Fort Beaufort case and farmer Bennie Smit. The De Brug videotape has never surfaced online.