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News that the offices of the Democratic Alliance at the KwaZulu-Natal
Legislature Complex in Pietermaritzburg were damaged by a fire early this
morning is viewed with great suspicion after recent fires destroyed the
offices of Inkatha Freedom Party in that same complex.

“At the last sitting of the KZN Legislature a member of the ruling party, in
motivating for a new legislature complex to be built, stated that the
Legislature should move out of these buildings because they were built by
colonial masters. A few days after that our offices were burnt down and now
the offices of the official opposition have been destroyed. We have not been
able to use our offices since that time. We view these incidents with a
great deal of suspicion as it is too much of a coincidence that only the
offices of the two largest opposition parties have been destroyed one after
the other in such a short period of time,” said IFP Leader in the
KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, Mr Blessed Gwala, MPL.

“This can be viewed as a political conspiracy either to disrupt the work of
the opposition or a desperate attempt to add strength to the call for the
building of a new legislature complex in Pietermaritzburg – or both.  If the
ruling party wants to argue that we move out of these buildings because they
were built by the apartheid regime, then that argument must also extend to
the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the parliamentary buildings in Cape Town
and most of the municipal buildings across South Africa because all of these
were built during the time of apartheid,” continued Mr Gwala.

“As the IFP we had objected to the building of a new complex because of the
huge cost implications and strongly believe that tax payer’s money should be
put to better use in providing essential services to our people rather than
boosting the inflated egos of members of the ruling party. We have called
for a full investigation into the cause of the fires at our offices and now
insist that these fires at the DA offices must also be thoroughly
investigated by independent investigators and the findings be made know
before more suspicious fires occur”, concluded Mr Gwala.

Issued by IFP