SA team works overnight to bring home bodies of those who died in Nigeria church collapse

AS THE sun went down last night, an Airbus and an Antonov cargo plane were due to take off from the Waterkloof Air Force Base to fetch the remains of South Africans who died when the Synagogue Church of All Nations guest house in Lagos collapsed in September.

The Airbus A320 had about 100 passengers, including members of the SANDF’s Military Health Services and the state forensic pathology services.

The Antonov AN124 was loaded with four mortuary vehicles. The bodies are to be loaded directly into the mortuary vehicles, which will then be driven back onto the Antonov and flown home.

The team is expecting to bring all the South African bodies home tomorrow. The aircraft was chartered by the Department of Transport from Imvubu Aviation Services, who are one of a group of aviation companies contracted to the government. Imvubu is a licensed contractor. The Antonov is owned by Maximus Air Cargo which is understood to do humanitarian work at cost price. The Airbus was due to depart about 7pm last night and the Antonov, which is faster, a little later. They will fly directly to Abuja where they will offload passengers and vehicles.

From there it’s about a threehour drive to collect the bodies. The group expect to work throughout today and be back in South Africa tomorrow morning.

The brother of missing veteran journalist Ponko Ka Masiba says the family is preparing for the dead man’s burial in the Eastern Cape.

“Everything has been organised for the burial,” said Vuyo Masiba, from Gugulethu, who is in the Eastern Cape where Masiba’s wife, Tobeka Tongo-Masiba, lives.

The government said this week an official reception for the collapse victims would take place tomorrow.

Special envoy to Nigeria, Jeff Radebe, was to brief the media today on the final repatriation plans.

Vuyo Masiba said while there had been no official confirmation from the gover nment that his brother had been identified among the deceased, the family had come to terms with the fact that he had died.

Masiba was visiting Pastor TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos to write an article about it when the multi-storey guesthouse collapsed, killing 116 people.

While the majority could be identified from their ID documents, there were difficulties with further identification due to the extent of the injuries suffered. DNA tests are under way after officials visited relatives across South Africa to draw blood for matches.

The head of the Anglican Church in Souther n Africa, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, has asked South Africans to pray for the successful repatriation of the bodies.

jan.cronje@inl.co.za