THE impatience was evident last week. Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba said grieving South Africans had waited too long for the bodies of those crushed in the collapse of the TB Joshua church building in Lagos to be returned.
But on Sunday, finally, the remains of 74 South African victims of the disaster nine weeks ago arrived at the Waterkloof Air Force base in Pretoria, where they were handed over to their families.
It was a deeply emotional time. Some relatives could be seen supporting and comforting one another as Cassius Lubisi, of the Presidency, read out the names of those off-loaded from a special flight and given a dignified send-off ceremony to their hometowns for burial.
The tragedy struck home in virtually every corner of our country. Lubisi said 22 victims were from Gauteng and 23 from Mpumalanga, with others from the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, North West, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said the tragedy had united South Africans, and he hoped the families of the victims could find inspiration in the knowledge that the country shared their pain.
The Inter-Ministerial Task Team on the Nigeria tragedy, led by Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, has done a sterling job. They have worked tirelessly to identify the remains and bring them back, and to do so in as humane a way as possible.
The media were kept at a distance to give the families space, but certainly anyone watching the ceremony would have been moved.
Now, as the cameras move away, the families face the trauma of burying their loved ones and accepting the reality of their deaths.
There is still an agonising wait for the families of 11 victims of the tragedy whose remains are still in Nigeria. There is no doubt the whole team involved has performed admirably.
But their job is not yet over.
They, and the rest of the South African government, must keep up the pressure to get the answers that not only the relatives of the victims want, but that the whole of South Africa needs to help bring closure to this terrible tragedy.