After 65 years in the precincts of Parliament the British High Commission is considering giving up its prime location and relocating to another building in the city, officials confirmed on Monday.
No other diplomatic mission has offices in the precincts. Public works department representative Lucky Mochalibane said the South African government was interested in buying back the property ”as this will help alleviate the problem of lack of space in the parliamentary precinct”.
The building — opposite the National Assembly and metres away from President Thabo Mbeki’s Tuynhuys office — was bought by the British High Commission in 1937.
The British managed to resist attempts by South Africa’s apartheid regime to relocate the High Commission in the 1980s and early 1990s, but are now willing to move. The matter was under discussion with the South African government, said Nick Sheppard from the High Commission.
The commission’s commercial, consular and management sections are already housed in Cape Town’s Southern Life building, which is convenient for public access.
Sheppard said the commission’s offices in Parliament’s precincts needed to be renovated and refurbished and that the British government was in discussions with the department of foreign affairs about a possible move.
However, if an agreement was not reached with the government on the relocation, the cheaper option would be to refurbish the building and continue operating from within the precincts.
Pan Africanist Congress deputy president Dr Motsoko Pheko, who last year tabled a draft resolution in Parliament calling for the British to move out, welcomed the news on Monday.
The British should never have occupied the premises in the first place, as Parliament was the seat of the nation’s power and was therefore sacrosanct, he said.
”Britain must realise that it occupied the precincts of our Parliament without the permission of the people it colonised and has no legitimate right to be situated on the seat of this nation’s power,” his resolution of February 21 last year said.
”The PAC has painfully observed that Britain, a former colonial power which occupied by force of arms this country and colonially named it ‘South Africa’
… is doing what has never been done anywhere in a self-respecting sovereign nation.”
Pheko said he hoped the British would not sell the property at an exorbitant price. ”I would like to know how much they bought the property for in 1937 and how much they want for it now.” – Sapa