Sighting record / 2004
Phoenix, north of Durban. Sunday 27 June 2004. Just before 4am, Roshnie Naidu noticed a bright light flashing through her curtains. She thought it was a police helicopter. There was no sound of rotor blades. She opened the curtains on a huge, pulsating ball of light, blue and purple colours filtering through it. Every few seconds it changed shape, circular to oval. Her husband Shrirama filmed it. The couple said it stayed in the sky for about three hours and disappeared as the sun came up. A physicist later watched the footage and named the planet Venus. The Naidus never accepted it.
Phoenix is a township about 25 km north-west of central Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal. It began as a sugarcane estate and was declared an Indian residential area under the Group Areas Act in 1979. Its name is linked with Gandhi's Phoenix Settlement. In the winter of 2004 it became the setting for a small, stubborn mystery.