Case file · Close encounter
Credo Mutwa and the Mantindane
The Zulu sangoma and writer Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa described grey beings he called Mantindane and said he had been abducted by them.
1996 CE · -27.45, 23.43 · status: claim
The account
Mutwa (1921–2020) wrote widely on African tradition, from Indaba, My Children (1964) onward. In the 1990s he told Western UFO writers that African peoples had long known star beings, set out in his book Song of the Stars (1996), and he became a fixture of conspiracy circles. He spent his last years in Kuruman.
The sceptical view
Scholars have criticised Mutwa for presenting his own inventions as ancient Zulu lore. His alien accounts are unsupported personal testimony, shaped in part by Western UFO literature.