Rebuilt parliament designs reveal modern precinct with child daycare centre, gym and sauna

Contractors will finally start restoring parliament buildings destroyed in the January 2022 fire after parliament bosses handed over the site to a contractor expected to begin demolition work on Friday.

Journalists also learnt there are ambitious plans to not only reconstruct the destroyed buildings, National Assembly chamber and offices but the new parliament will include a daycare centre and rooms for nursing mothers as parliament is attracting employees of child-bearing age.

A new gym will be built with a sauna to “take care of the wellbeing of MPs”. The new buildings will also come with modern boardrooms fitted with state-of-the-art audio-visual systems.

Secretary to parliament Xolile George has indicated the price tag for the restoration and refurbishment of the buildings will only be clear once a contractor has been appointed.

The fire destroyed the National Assembly and parts of the old wing, including MP and staff offices, impacting on the space functionality of the institution.

George, who addressed the media accompanied by a technical team and an architect, shared designs the design teams are considering.

He said they were playing with a number of concepts of what a post-apartheid parliament should look like, taking in factors that inform it in the context of a country whose aspirational statement speaks to diversity, the tapestry of rich cultures and traditions that define who South Africa is as a new nation and “how we infuse that in a design”.

“We had given them the challenges to think deeply about how a parliament built in 2024 to 2026 should remain as a standing symbol for the next 300 to 500 years.”

Among the considerations is a chamber big enough to accommodate MPs from both houses. In the old chamber, during joint sittings such as the state of the nation address, chairs would be moved between buildings to accommodate National Council of Provinces (NCOP) members in the National Assembly chamber.

George was at pains to explain how much had been done towards the rebuilding process.

“A lot of work has been happening from January 2022 until now,” he said.

The affected areas were declared a crime scene for the first six months after the fire while criminal investigations were conducted. When the site was handed over to parliament in July 2022, an initial assessment was done by the Coega Development Corporation on behalf of the department of public works and infrastructure.

At the time a report by Coega was handed to parliament and based on the work recommended, parliament’s presiding officers, then National Assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and NCOP chair Amos Masondo, approached finance minister Enoch Godongwana about funding the rebuilding process.

Godongwana announced in his October 2022 medium-term budget policy statement that R2bn would be set aside for the rebuilding over the next three years.

On Thursday George said the R2bn was not the cost to build a new parliament but the appropriation was meant to start the work.

“In February 2023, the allocation of R2bn was confirmed to allow us to do the work, to restore and to work on the offices. It has always been understood and said by parliament the main cost driver will be fully determined by the final contract award,” said George.

“Nine contractors will take the design work and quote on it, on what it will cost to do this.”

Parliament’s special projects manager Simon Mashigo said in addition to the R2bn, the requirement for ICT modernisation — including replacement of broadcasting equipment that was burnt, a state-of-the-art broadcasting studio, audio-visual in all boardrooms and the replacement of the data centre and data networks — was R943m.

The main cost drivers in this case are the chamber, conferencing and voting system, the data centre and the broadcasting system, he said.

They also had to deal with the reality that the masterplan of parliament needed to be developed to look at the functionality of the 10 buildings and the surrounding precinct, George said.

“How do you make this space functionally integrated? How do you optimise the space design of parliament that otherwise has always been a combination of an alteration  or an addition without looking at the interconnecting space utility of an institution?”

A lot of work was also done to comply with bodies such heritage agencies and the City of Cape Town, which is an approval authority of rezoning and development applications, he said. Parliament had to comply with laws relating to assets of parliament, including auditing of assets, determination of their value before and after the fire, their book value if any, considering what could be salvaged, and compliance with special permits of assets.

“All those things added to the time management outline that otherwise would not have been envisaged without that work.

“One has to strike a delicate balance between managing execution and not compromising compliance with laws and regulations of our country.”

TimesLIVE