Construction of a proper parliament began on 12 May 1875, when Governor Henry Barkly laid the foundation stone. The original architect, Charles Freeman, had grand ambitions: a central dome, statues, ornamental fountains. But poor soil conditions and rising groundwater turned his vision into a financial sinkhole. Freeman was dismissed in 1876, replaced by Henry Greaves, who stripped the design down to something the colony could afford. Political turmoil intervened next -- the British overthrow of the Cape government in 1878, the Confederation Wars, and the bankruptcy of the construction company in 1883. The building finally opened in 1884, a full nine years after ground was broken, its austere exterior a monument to compromise.

In the 1920s, Sir Herbert Baker -- the architect who had already left his mark across South Africa -- designed an extension with a new House of Assembly chamber. The old assembly hall became, of all things, a parliamentary dining room run by South African Railways and Harbours. The more troubling expansion came in the 1980s, when the building grew to accommodate apartheid's tricameral system: separate chambers for White, Coloured, and Indian representatives, codifying racial segregation into the architecture itself. After the democratic elections of 1994, those same spaces were repurposed for the new National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. The walls remained; their meaning changed entirely.

On the morning of 2 January 2022, fire broke out in third-floor offices and spread rapidly through the parliamentary precinct. The sprinkler system failed. Protection services staff were not on duty. By mid-morning, flames had consumed much of the National Assembly Chamber in the 1980s wing, gutting one of the most symbolically important rooms in South African democracy. A 49-year-old man, later identified as Zandile Christmas Mafe, was arrested by the Hawks Priority Crime unit and charged with arson, housebreaking, and theft under the National Key Points Act. The complex, designated a Grade 1 National Heritage Site by the South African Heritage Resources Agency, remains under reconstruction.

The Houses of Parliament are three buildings in one: the original 1884 structure now housing the National Council of Provinces, Baker's 1920s extension with its committee rooms, and the 1980s wing where the National Assembly sits. Each layer of construction marks a different political era, from colonial self-governance through apartheid to democracy. Walking through the complex is less like visiting a single building and more like moving through a geological cross-section of South African governance, where each stratum tells a different story about who held power and who was excluded from it.