By Andisiwe Makinana –
The South African government did not hear from its Nigerian counterpart about the deaths of 67 South Africans during the collapse of a church building in Nigeria last Friday.
It instead heard from its own diplomats over a period of four days that the incident was “quite serious and tragic”. But Department of International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane refused to point fingers or raise doubts about the strength of the diplomatic ties between the two countries when she spoke to journalists on Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s un-South-African to get into finger-pointing at a time where we’re dealing with a tragedy,” she said. Nkoana-Mashabane also refused to entertain the reports that Nigerian authorities were denying that South Africans had died in the incident.
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