Fire gutted ANC veteran Tony Yengeni’s Tygerhof house in the early hours of Monday morning.
Firefighters got the call for the Fitzpatrick Road blaze at 4.30am.
Fire and Rescue spokesman Theo Layne told a radio station that Mr Yengeni’s mother had been in the house at the time, but she had got out safely.
Mr Layne said the cause of the fire was undetermined.
Jean Petersen, who lives across the road from the Yengeni house, said he had been woken by his dogs barking, and when he had looked outside, he had seen the fire going through the roof.
He, along with another resident and an armed response officer, had pried the home’s security gate open.
A woman who arrived at the house at this time, and whom Mr Petersen assumed to be Mr Yengeni’s daughter, said her grandmother was still inside.
The security officer had then helped Mr Yengeni’s mother out of the house.
“We had to act quickly because we were told by who I think was the daughter, who had just arrived, that there was a gas tank in the kitchen,” said Mr Petersen.
