A suspected instigator of the major fire in South Africa's parliament appeared briefly in court on Tuesday.

As the public prosecutor announced, it is a 49-year-old man named Zandile Christmas Mafe from a poor district in Cape Town.

He was charged with burglary, arson, possession of explosives and damage to infrastructure.

His defense lawyer said his client should now be used as a "scapegoat" for the failure of the government and parliament to adequately protect the most important institution of the state.

"This poor guy is now being accused of having destroyed parliament." His client rejects all allegations.

A decision about a release on bail has yet to be made.

The trial was adjourned to January 11th for further investigation.

Claudia Bröll

Freelance Africa correspondent based in Cape Town.

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After almost 48 hours, the fire brigade managed to put out the fire on Tuesday night.

On Monday evening, the notorious south-easterly wind at the Cape had fanned it again.

A team of experts has started the investigation and a report is expected in the coming week.

The fire broke out on Sunday in the old wing of the parliament building, built in 1884, and quickly spread.

Temperatures in the building are said to have reached 440 degrees.

Much of the roof of the National Assembly was destroyed, several floors and offices of MPs burned down.

From the outside, the completely sooty, imposing entrance between the high columns can be seen.

Other areas of the parliamentary district such as the museum were spared.

Burglary through an office window

As the images from security cameras show, a burglar entered the parliament building through an office window at 2 a.m. on Sunday.

The valve on a sprinkler system was closed.

The fire broke out around 3 a.m.

As the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa emphasized, the emergency services reacted immediately to the first alarm.

They were at the scene of the fire within a few minutes.

Otherwise the National Assembly and the Council of the Provinces - the equivalent of the Federal Council - would have been in ruins.

Apart from the arsonist, those responsible are now being sought. There are increasing indications of inadequate safety precautions. As the minister for public facilities, Patricia de Lille, explained, the burglar was discovered far too late because the recordings of the security cameras were not continuously monitored. For four years now, parliament has had only one interim security chief. A union had also accused those responsible of having saved on the supervisory staff on weekends and holidays. The spokeswoman for the National Assembly firmly rejected this. A fire due to an electrical fault had already been reported in parliament last March. It will now be determined whether the deficiencies identified at the time have been remedied.

Parliament is still on the summer recess. MEPs should, however, resume work as planned. The city council of Cape Town offered its town hall, council chambers, the conference center and offices as alternative locations. Cape Town and the Western Cape Province are reacted to by the national opposition party DA.

At the same time, the demand reappeared to relocate parliament near the administrative capital Pretoria, 1,400 kilometers away, in order to save travel costs and effort.

Instead of renovating the “colonial facilities” in Cape Town, a move should be financed, wrote the deputy head of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters Party, Floyd Shivambu, on Twitter.

South Africa should only have one capital.

South Africa's government is based in Pretoria; Bloemfontein, with the Supreme Court of Appeal, is the capital of the judiciary.

The Parliament of the Union of South Africa was already in Cape Town from 1910 onwards.

The African National Congress had also considered moving parliament in the 1990s.

However, the project failed due to resistance from its own party in the Western Cape.