Johannesburg - Thanduxolo Doro refuses to give up hope that his sister is alive, even as he once again leaves the airport without her on Friday.
For the third day in a row, Doro waited at the arrivals gate at OR Tambo International Airport. For the third day in a row, he pleaded with officials to help him.
“I’m not getting much info,” he told several journalists.
He refuses to believe his sister is one of the 67 South Africans confirmed dead.
“We keep the faith. I’m saying my sister is alive,” he said.
There was a marked decrease in the number of families waiting at the airport this morning.
The Mahlwele brothers were there on Thursday hoping for information about their mother, but they were not there this morning. Morwesi Molebatsi was waiting for her daughter earlier in the week, but not Friday.
Some people who were at prophet TB Joshua’s Synagogue, Church of All Nations when it collapsed arrived at the airport on Friday morning, but unlike on previous days, the police escorted them to a room where counsellors from the Department of Social Development offered them trauma counselling.
The department’s director of adoptions and international social services Dr Tebogo Mabe confirmed this morning that four people off the flight from Lagos were at the scene of the collapse, but they declined to speak to the media.
“This is devastating, you can understand,” Mabe said.
He said people who suffer trauma often do not want to relive the incident immediately.
“When they are ready and want to talk about it, we are ready,” Mabe said.
He said the department would provide counselling until everyone had been accounted for.
The Star