Back home at last

On her third visit to the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria, Phindile Sibanyoni took her husband along for his first pilgrimage. It never crossed her mind that it would be his last.

"I survived but he was not so lucky. That tragedy took away something very close to my heart, my loved one. I see him all the time, each night before I fall asleep."

The 33-year-old widow was among hundreds of bereaved relatives at Waterkloof air force base in Pretoria yesterday for the official reception of the remains of 74 South Africans who died when a guesthouse of the church in Lagos collapsed on September 12.

A banker from Ermelo in Mpumalanga, Sibanyoni was comforted by the fact that she had been with 44-year-old Jacob, also a banker, when fate struck.

"It was his first time and he was enjoying every moment of it. He was with me till the end, that is my comfort," she said.

Overcome relatives broke down in tears as the director-general in The Presidency, Cassius Lubisi read out the names of 84 people from South Africa who died in Nigeria. But not a single tear dropped from Phillip Mbedzi, 61, who lost his 30-year-old daughter, Mpho, a laboratory technician at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital.

The moment the news of the tragedy had broken, he had somehow known his daughter was not one of the 26 survivors.

"It clicked that she was gone. I did not have to hang on to the false hope that she survived from the word go. We accepted it, we accepted that God allowed it. He had a purpose for it," he said.

The last time he heard from his daughter was when she called him before she left for Nigeria two days before she met her fate.

The two-month wait for her body was hard for Mbedzi and his wife, Munyadziwa, 56.

"She is here now, to be buried among her people," he said.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said efforts were being intensified to ensure the bodies of 11 South Africans still being identified were returned. "We express the hope that with the return of the remains of the departed, their souls may rest in eternal peace. We are pleased that they will rest in peace in the land of their birth," Ramaphosa said.

Though the families were suffering great sorrow, they would draw inspiration from the knowledge that the entire South African nation shared their bereavement, the deputy president said.

He hoped yesterday's ceremony would be "the first step towards the healing of your pain and the sorrow of a nation".

Twenty-three of those who died were from Mpumalanga, 22 from Gauteng, 12 from Eastern Cape, 13 from Limpopo, six from North West, five from KwaZulu-Natal, two from the Free State and two from Western Cape.

The bodies, in three trucks, were taken to provincial pathology laboratories from where they were to be taken to government mortuaries closer to their homes for families to claim them for individual burials.

It was announced at the ceremony that Peter Fourie, an advanced-pathology services official with the Department of Health, had died on Friday after contracting malaria during the repatriation process in Nigeria.

Chronology of Nigerian disaster

September 12 : The dormitory of Pastor TB Joshua's Synagogue Church of All Nations collapses, killing 116.

September 16 : President Jacob Zuma announces that there were South Africans in the building.

September 18 : An advance team of 10 disaster management personnel arrives in Nigeria to help with the recovery of bodies.

September 22: A plane carrying 26 South Africans injured in the building collapse lands at Swartkop air force base, in Pretoria.

November 14 : A team of 80 South African specialists leaves for Nigeria to begin repatriating the remains.

November 16: A plane carrying three specialised forensic pathology trucks and 74 bodies lands to an official reception at Waterkloof air force base.