Following the UFO Conference in Johannesburg over the weekend, it is now clear whom the Protection of State Information Bill is really aimed at.

Aliens from outer space, that’s who.

As the ANC has repeatedly explained, the bill seeks to prevent foreign agencies from undermining the security of the state. And nothing is more foreign, not even Somalian shopkeepers, than little green men whose spacecraft keep flashing their lights in the night sky.

They’ve been at it again, this time in the Free State. Riaan van Greuning of Delmas even took photographs of UFO fireballs above Harrismith three weeks ago. Fortunately the bill is not yet law, or Van Greuning could have had his photographs seized and found himself locked up for releasing classified information.

The bill’s attempt to suppress news about extra-terrestrial activity confirms UFO believers’ worst fears. They have always known that governments hide evidence of ETs, but South Africa is the first country to impose a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for exposing what the government would prefer kept secret.

The first UFO conference to be held here will almost certainly also be the last.

Before it took place the conference host, Michael Tellinger, declared: “Millions of people in SA have had their own personal experience with ETs and UFOs, but most have in the past been too nervous to raise the subject and have been afraid of ridicule.”

Now they will be even more nervous. Going to jail for admitting they had been swept up into a spaceship won’t be a laughing matter at all.

That’s what happened to one of the delegates, United States author James Gilliand. On board the craft was a cat-like blonde woman “in the fifth dimension” who gave him a big hug. Clearly the ANC government can’t allow this sort of thing to be reported, for two |reasons.

If anyone is to be transported into a “flying saucer” or its equivalent, and given hugs in other dimensions, it should be a senior member of the ruling party, preferably the president himself, who has had more than average experience in receiving female hugs.

Secondly, it is essential the event remain confidential, to stop the media from claiming that billions of taxpayers’ money was spent teaching the deserving recipient how to enter a new dimension, and paying him sick leave if he couldn’t.

Another delegate, Capetonian Gerhard Rasch, explained that the American space agency Nasa was a front, and added: “We are living in a f****n matrix.” Under South Africa’s new law, it will be even more of a f****n matrix, naturally for Mr Rasch’s own good.

Those of us who lived through the PW Botha era will feel quite at home. In those days we weren’t allowed to report scenes of “unrest”, and if we accidentally came upon such a scene, we were instructed to turn around and walk away. In the same way if we chance upon a little hairless, bug-eyed alien in future, we are to keep this experience to |ourselves.

The national security depends on it.

Kerry Cassidy, who makes documentary films about government conspiracies to keep people in ignorance of ETs living unrecognised among us, told the conference such beings were reptilian in nature. That’s another reason for the secrecy bill.

No honourable “mamba” wants to be identified as a snake in the grass.