It could take government R1 billion and five years to rebuild Parliament.
That’s according to Ben Maswinga, the South African National Heritage Resource Agency’s (Sahra) manager of the build environment unit, whose remarks come after a devastating fire last week gutted both the Old Assembly and the National Assembly.
“Parliament is both a national key point as well as a national heritage site; it’s very early to tell but the estimated figure at this point is over a billion rand.
“It’s going to need a great deal of resources to fix this in terms of expertise, such as material analysis and restoration architects, heritage architects and engineers. It will be a monumental task,” Mwasinga said.
He said it could take one year or more of design input from various experts, another year of reworking and finalising the design, then doing the cost analysis.
“Anything upwards of five years and that would be if everything went very well,” he said.
Investigations into the cause of the fire are still under way.
Zandile Mafe has been charged with setting fire to Parliament, and will appear in court today for his bail application.
On Friday, Parliament confirmed the City Hall would be used as an alternative venue for the joint sitting of Parliament to host the Nation Address (SONA) taking place on 10 February.
On Monday, Parliament announced that the sittings of the National Assembly – including the Budget Speech scheduled for February – will take place in the unaffected Good Hope Chamber in the precinct.
It said the chamber is one of the oldest meeting rooms of Parliament and has essential technical capabilities and meets basic requirements for sittings of the House.