Alien Gold Fever

South African UFO followers say it's all perfectly-clear:

Aliens -- much like humans -- have been plundering the planet for gold for thousands of years, according to the organizer of South Africa's first UFO Science and Consciousness Conference, held in Johannesburg last week.

"There's a battle for Earth by some interesting dark forces," conference organizer Michael Tellinger told News 24. "All the governments in the world are puppets and instruments to implement the will of a small group of individuals. The royal political bloodline goes back thousand of years."

..."They came to Earth looking for gold. We are all still obsessed with gold," Tellinger said, according to News 24.

And thanks to its diamonds and gold deposits, South Africa is "at the heart of this," Tellinger reportedly said.

"South Africa has been dubbed as the cradle of humankind and the place where all life form began, thus the reason [South Africa] was selected as the host for the UFO Science and Consciousness Conference," he told The Citizen. "We have scientific evidence that there was physical life before humans which were African knowledge keepers and custodians of secret knowledge."

Tellinger's statements about gold-hunting aliens were widely reported by the South African press, while comparisons between the gold-digging alien theory and the plot of the film "Cowboys & Aliens" were noted by the sci-fi blog io9.

...Laura Eisenhower, who describes herself as the great-granddaughter of president Dwight Eisenhower, claims world leaders have experienced close contact with aliens, signing treaties with them every decade.

"Extra-terrestrials have been working with governments for a while," she told News 24.