{"id":2026,"date":"2014-09-22T07:01:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T07:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2014-09-22T07:01:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T07:01:12","slug":"synagogue-survivor-tells-of-days-in-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=2026","title":{"rendered":"Synagogue: Survivor tells of days in darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lindiwe<\/a>
Lindiwe Ndwandwe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lying in the rubble of the guest house, only able to tell if it was night or day through a tiny crack, Lindiwe Ndwandwe heard the screams of others beneath the debris slowly turn silent.<\/p>\n

For five days, the 33-year-old was trapped inside a toilet next to the dining hall of the collapsed Synagogue Church of All Nations, breathing only through a small hole in the wreckage.<\/p>\n

In the end, she was forced to drink her own urine to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a dream to me that really, it\u2019s me that came out from here,\u201d the South African told AFP<\/em> on Saturday as she surveyed the remains of the church in the Nigerian city of Lagos.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe it. The tears that I cry, it\u2019s because I don\u2019t believe,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

A total of 86 people were killed and dozens more left trapped when the guest house attached to the church run by Nigerian preacher, T.B. Joshua, collapsed on September 12.<\/p>\n

Some 350 South Africans were thought to be visiting the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of the megacity of Lagos when the three-storey building came down during construction work.<\/p>\n

Joshua, one of Nigeria\u2019s best-known evangelical preachers referred to by followers across the world as \u201cThe Prophet\u201d or \u201cThe Man of God\u201d, on Sunday pledged to go to South Africa to meet survivors and their families.<\/p>\n

He observed a minute of silence at his weekly morning service, and said he would \u201cbe travelling to South Africa to meet people from South Africa and other nations\u2026 in memory of martyrs of faith\u201d.<\/p>\n

S\u2019Africa opposition party calls for lawsuit<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s largest opposition party yesterday said it will push the government to launch a class action against the church, where 84 of its nationals lost their lives.<\/p>\n

Democratic Alliance shadow foreign minister, Stevens Mokgalapa, said the fact that rescue workers complained that staff at the church had impeded their work in the immediate aftermath of the disaster meant there could be cause for legal action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DA believes that there is now enough evidence for the South African government to, at the very least, explore the possibility of a class action suit against the church on behalf of the affected families,\u201d Mokgalapa said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt stands to reason that the church and its members may be criminally liable for the death of a number of South Africans who could have been rescued from the rubble if rescue work was speedily permitted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lying in the rubble of the guest house, only able to tell if it was night or day through a tiny crack, Lindiwe Ndwandwe heard the screams of others beneath the debris slowly turn silent. For five days, the 33-year-old was trapped inside a toilet next to the dining hall of the collapsed Synagogue Church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Lindiwe-Ndwandwe.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-wG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2028,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions\/2028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}