By now, everyone who follows the news knows about the Nigerian church collapse in which 67 South Africans lost their lives. But what about everyone else?
As the news broke about 67 South Africans dying in the church collapse, I could not help but to notice how SA-centric the news coverage is. The news channels (ANN7, eNCA and SABC News) all constantly remind us that 67 South Africans have died, but did no one else die in the situation? Does their deaths not matter?
It seems as if the value of a non-South African lives does not matter to the local news channels, two of which have the word Africa in their name, which, though implies presenting African news concerning Africans other than South Africans in a fair light, they do not.
What makes things worse is that SA online news services take their lead from the news channels, so almost no local news website acknowledges the amount of non-South Africans who died in the incident. Just try to google how many people died in the tragedy in total and see what an effort it is to find this amount.
This is very similar to CNN who, during a crisis that involved people from many different countires, choose rather to focus just on the Americans involved, even though that channel bills itself as an "international" broadcaster.
This is not the first time a tragedy occured involving SOuth Africans and non- SA citizens, but this is the first that it seems as if the non-South African victims are not important, something that I hope does not become a trend over time.
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