South Africa

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South African Parliament Buildings ‘Gutted’ After Large Fire
Officials warned that the damage to the buildings would be extensive. A man was arrested on Sunday morning inside the parliamentary complex, Parliament’s spokesman said.

By Lynsey Chutel and Austin Ramzy
Jan. 2, 2022

CAPE TOWN — A large fire at South Africa’s Houses of Parliament on Sunday sent flames and smoke billowing from rooftops and fire crews racing to save the historic structures.

Officials said the fire spread from an office space on the third floor of a building adjacent to the old National Assembly building toward a gym and to rooftops. The scale of the destruction was not immediately clear, they said, but there were fires burning in “two very distinct areas,” and they warned that it was likely to be extensive.

Parliament’s spokesman, Moloto Mothapo, said on Sunday evening that a man in his early 50s was arrested inside the parliamentary complex on Sunday morning in connection to the fire, but he did not give any further details.

“The entire parliamentary complex is severely damaged — waterlogged and smoke damaged,” JP Smith, Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, said, adding that “the roof above the old assembly hall is completely gone.”

“The second point of fire is the National Assembly building, which is gutted,” Mr. Smith said, referring to the building where the Parliament meets. “The structural ceiling has collapsed. The fire staff had to be momentarily withdrawn.”

Cape Town’s Fire and Rescue Service spokesman, Jermaine Carelse, warned that the buildings themselves were at risk of collapse, given the intense heat of the fire.

The roofing material was “even melting,” he said, according to the News24 website, adding, “There have been reports of some walls showing cracks.”

The fire was reported around 6 a.m. and was still burning late Sunday afternoon. No injuries or fatalities have been reported. Parliament was not in session because it had been closed for the holidays.




https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/worl ... ament.html

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At least 73 killed as fire engulfs five-storey building in Johannesburg
Seven children among dozens dead after blaze tears through building in South Africa’s largest city

Helen Sullivan and agencies
Thu 31 Aug 2023 10.01 BST

At least 73 people, including seven children, have died in a fire in a multi-storey building in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city, emergency services have said.

In one of the country’s worst such tragedies in living memory, Emergency Management Services said a further 52 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out early on Thursday.

People had been evacuated from the building, and the emergency services spokesperson said a search and recovery operation was under way. It was likely the death toll would rise, Robert Mulaudzi said, and it was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.

“Over 20 years in the service, I’ve never come across something like this,” he added.

There was an “informal settlement” inside the five-storey building, Mulaudzi said. “So there [are] a lot of informal structures inside the building. There is a lot of debris that we have to remove.”

The local television station Newzroom Afrika said the building had been abandoned previously but was inhabited at the time of the fire.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ire-deaths

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Zuma’s new party upends election as ANC reels from vote collapse
Ex-president’s uMkhonto we Sizwe party erodes vote share of African National Congress, which has been in power for three decades

Rachel Savage in Johannesburg
Fri 31 May 2024 17.55 CEST

South Africa is facing the uncertain possibility of a coalition government after the former president Jacob Zuma’s new party upended the country’s elections, contributing to the African National Congress party’s vote share collapsing well below half, with 97% of voting stations counted.

By Saturday, the ANC, which has governed South Africa with a large majority since Nelson Mandela led it to power 30 years ago after the end of apartheid, had 40.14% of the vote.

If the final results are similar, that would represent a decline of more than 15 percentage points from the 2019 elections, and suggest voters have punished the former liberation movement for chronic unemployment, rolling power cuts and crumbling infrastructure.

The business-friendly Democratic Alliance (DA) was on 21.7% of the vote, while Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party, which was launched only in December and supports nationalising banks and expropriating land without compensation, was on 14.8%.

Earlier, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa’s second most populous province and the 82-year-old Zuma’s base, the MK had 43.6% of the vote with just 57% of voting stations counted by late afternoon on Thursday. That was more than double any other party. It also took votes from the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which was founded by the firebrand former ANC youth leader Julius Malema and looked likely to underperform its 2019 vote share of 10.8%.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, a government-owned research organisation, projected earlier on Thursday that the ANC’s vote share would fall to 40.5%, with the DA on 21.7% and the MK on 14.6%.

The election deals a huge blow to the ANC, which forced Zuma to resign as South Africa’s president in 2018 after a series of corruption allegations, which he denies. While the ANC is expected to remain the largest party by some margin, it will probably have to take at least one large coalition partner – and to decide quickly, as the constitution says the new parliament must sit within 14 days of results being declared and elect a new president at that sitting.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/artic ... s-election

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Final results in seismic South Africa election confirm ANC has lost majority
ANC says demands that President Cyril Ramaphosa must step down is ‘no-go area’ as rival Jacob Zuma stokes fears of violence

Rachel Savage in Johannesburg
Sun 2 Jun 2024 20.56 CEST

Final results from Wednesday’s seismic South Africa elections have confirmed that the African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy, firing the starting gun on unprecedented coalition talks.

The ANC, which led the fight to free South Africa from apartheid, won just 159 seats in the 400-member national assembly on a vote share of just over 40%. High unemployment, power cuts, violent crime and crumbling infrastructure have contributed to a haemorrhaging of support for the former liberation movement.

The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) won 87 seats, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) - a new party led by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bitter rival, the former president Jacob Zuma – took 58, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a Marxist-Leninist party led by the ousted ANC youth leader Julius Malema, took 39.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/artic ... -ramaphosa