The seat of South Africa's legislature burned on 2 January 2022. Zandile Christmas Mafe, later found unfit to stand trial and institutionalised, had climbed a 1.3-metre fence on New Year's Day and moved through the precinct for more than a day before setting the fire. Nobody saw him. Parliament's forensic investigation, summarised publicly in October 2023, found that the SAPS officer responsible for monitoring the CCTV feed had been asleep; that the Parliamentary Protection Services had been sent off duty for the festive season; and that fire-safety compliance across the precinct was "pervasively" absent, with sprinkler and suppression systems not working. Parliament declined to publish the full report "on legal advice".
By July 2025 the Department of Public Works put the rebuild at R4.4 billion — R3.6 billion for the National Assembly and R1.3 billion for the Old Assembly — with R574 million spent and completion targeted for November 2026. The Auditor-General flagged irregularities in sub-contracting at 90 Plein Street. Members of the joint committee complained that the Hawks' investigation had focused solely on Mafe and not on the security and compliance failures that let him in. The record is filed as state failure: the building where oversight happens burned because nobody was watching the camera, and the report on why is secret.