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Thick clouds of smoke over the Parliament in Cape Town
Photo: MIKE HUTCHINGS / REUTERS
The major fire in South Africa's parliament building on the New Year's weekend has flared up again.
That morning the fire brigade had declared that the fire was under control.
Thick, black clouds of smoke were seen on TV images, pouring out of the historic building in Cape Town.
The firefighting staff had previously been reduced from 70 firefighters to a dozen because only a few sources of fire could be controlled.
The responsible minister, Patricia de Lille, said in the afternoon that the enormous heat in the building had dropped from 400 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees.
An inspection of the ruin by investigators is therefore not yet possible.
The fire in the imposing Victorian building broke out early Sunday morning and had spread over large parts of the building complex, which consists of three parts.
The assembly room of the House of Representatives was completely destroyed, the roof of the old assembly building collapsed.
The police arrested a 51-year-old man who was in the parliamentary complex.
He was interrogated and was due to appear in court on Tuesday.
Expensive reconstruction expected
The cost of the damage is likely to be horrific.
"We will need several hundred million, if not billions of rand for the reconstruction," said Cape Town's security officer Jean-Pierre Smith on Monday the news channel eNCA.
This would also correspond to several hundred million euros.
Cape Town has been the seat of the South African parliament, which consists of the National Assembly and the Upper House - the Council of Provinces - since 1910, while the government is based in Pretoria.
In 1990 the then President Frederik de Klerk declared the end of the racist apartheid regime in the parliament in Cape Town.
The building had already burned in March, but the fire was quickly brought under control.
In April, a major fire on Table Mountain in Cape Town caused devastation.
The fire hit several historic buildings and destroyed parts of the university library, among other things.
mrc / AFP / dpa