Pretoria - One of the 26 people injured in the Nigeria church building collapse has opted to stay in that country, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said on Monday.
“I must say only 25 boarded the aircraft because one returned to the synagogue yesterday,” he told reporters at the Swartkop Air Force Base in Pretoria shortly after the survivors arrived.
“I don't know the specific reasons of the person who returned to the synagogue. When they were being brought back, the person decided to go back.”
Around 115 people, among them 84 South Africans, were killed and dozens trapped when the multi-storey guesthouse attached to the Synagogue Church of All Nations, run by Nigerian preacher TB Joshua, collapsed on Friday, September 12.
Some 350 South Africans were thought to be visiting the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of Lagos when the building came down.
Joshua, one of Nigeria's best-known evangelical preachers referred to by followers across the world as “The Prophet” or “The Man of God”, on Sunday pledged to go to South Africa to meet survivors and their families.
Social workers received two South African toddlers orphaned by the collapse when they arrived at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital on Monday. The two were aged 18 months and two years, acting Cabinet spokeswoman Phumla Williams said.
Another child, aged six, was also part of the group of injured South Africans arriving home from Nigeria. Williams said the three children were in good hands.
Shortly after the C130 SA Air Force plane carrying them landed at Swartkop, an initial batch of the patients was whisked off to hospital. Most of the patients were brought out of the plane on stretchers and taken to ambulances.
A woman in a red dress, supported by two soldiers, limped to one of the ambulances. Others also walked out of the plane, with assistance.
A convoy of Tshwane metro police officers on motorbikes and SA Police Service vehicles escorted the first two ambulances from the military base shortly after 11am.
The second batch of almost 20 ambulances followed, escorted by wailing police sirens and flashing blue lights.
Sapa