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The Old Synagogue, Pretoria
The Old Synagogue, also known as The Pretoria Hebrew Congregation, is a former Orthodox Jewish congregation, synagogue, and apartheid-era court house on Paul Kruger Street in Pretoria, South Africa. It was consecrated in 1898 and closed as a synagogue in 1952, when the congregation moved to a larger site. The former synagogue building was subsequently expropriated and sold to the State for use as a Special Annex of the Supreme Court of South Africa between 1956 and 1977. In this period, Nelson Mandela was a defendant at the court in both the 1956 and the Rivonia treason trials. In 1977, it was the setting for an inquest into the death of Steve Biko. It is now a Grade II Provincial Heritage Resource and protected under the National Heritage Resources Act (25 of 1999). The building and site remains under the control of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure. History 1897–1952 synagogue and architecture State President Paul Kruger gave the land to the local Jewish commu ...
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Pretoria
Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountains. It has a reputation as an academic city and centre of research, being home to the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), the University of Pretoria (UP), the University of South Africa (UNISA), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and the Human Sciences Research Council. It also hosts the National Research Foundation (South Africa), National Research Foundation and the South African Bureau of Standards. Pretoria was one of the host cities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Pretoria is the central part of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality which was formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities, including B ...
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1956 Treason Trial
The Treason Trial was a trial in Johannesburg in which 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested in a raid and accused of treason in South Africa in 1956. The main trial lasted until 1961, when all of the defendants were found not guilty. During the trials, Oliver Tambo left the country and was exiled. Whilst in other European and African countries, he started an organisation which helped bring publicity to the African National Congress's cause in South Africa. Some of the defendants were later convicted in the Rivonia Trial in 1964. Chief Luthuli has said of the Treason Trial:The treason trial must occupy a special place in South African history. That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious ch ...
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Gothic Style
Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as ''opus Francigenum'' (); the term ''Gothic'' was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity. The defining design element of Gothic architecture is the pointed arch. The use of the pointed arch in turn led to the development of the pointed rib vault and flying buttresses, combined with elaborate tracery and stained glass windows. At the Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, the choir was reconstructed between 1140 and 1144, drawing together for the first time the developing Gothic ...
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Basilica
In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name to the ''basilica'' architectural form. Originally, a basilica was an ancient Roman public building, where courts were held, as well as serving other official and public functions. Basilicas are typically rectangular buildings with a central nave flanked by two or more longitudinal aisles, with the roof at two levels, being higher in the centre over the nave to admit a clerestory and lower over the side-aisles. An apse at one end, or less frequently at both ends or on the side, usually contained the raised tribunal occupied by the Roman magistrates. The basilica was centrally located in every Roman town, usually adjacent to the forum and often opposite a temple in imperial-era forums. Basilicas were also ...
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Façade
A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, as it sets the tone for the rest of the building. From the engineering perspective, the façade is also of great importance due to its impact on Efficient energy use, energy efficiency. For historical façades, many local zoning regulations or other laws greatly restrict or even forbid their alteration. Etymology The word is a loanword from the French , which in turn comes from the Italian language, Italian , from meaning 'face', ultimately from post-classical Latin . The earliest usage recorded by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is 1656. Façades added to earlier buildings It was quite common in the Georgian architecture, Georgian period for existing houses in English towns to be given a fashionable new f ...
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Polychromatic
Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors. When looking at artworks and architecture from Ancient history, antiquity and the European Middle Ages, people tend to believe that they were monochrome. In reality, the pre-Renaissance past was full of colour, and Greco-Roman sculptures and Gothic architecture, Gothic cathedrals, that are now white, beige, or grey, were initially painted in a variety of colours. As André Malraux stated: "Athens was never white but her statues, bereft of color, have conditioned the artistic sensibilities of Europe [...] the whole past has reached us colorless." Polychrome was and is a practice not limited only to the Western world. Non-Western artworks, like Chinese architecture, Chinese temples, Oceanian art, Oceanian Uli figures, or Maya ceramics, Maya ceramic vases, were also decora ...
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Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alone and over 14.8 million in the urban agglomeration, it is classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity and List of urban areas by population, one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. Johannesburg is the provinces of South Africa, provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, and seat of the country's highest court, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Constitutional Court. The city is located within the mineral-rich Witwatersrand hills, the epicentre of the international mineral and gold trade. The richest city in Africa by GDP and private wealth, Johannesburg functions as the economic capital of South Africa and is home to the continent's largest stock exchange, the Johannesburg Stock Exchang ...
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Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful
''Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful'' (1981) is the third and final novel by South African author Alan Paton. ''Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful'' is set in the 1950s, after apartheid was established in postwar South Africa. The historical novel explores fictional characters interacting with historical figures working to resist these laws. Paton's previous novel, '' Too Late the Phalarope'' was published twenty-eight years earlier in 1953. Paton originally conceived of the book as the first part of a trilogy. The novel was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1981. Background In this novel, set in the years 1952 to 1958, Paton drew from his years working as a political activist against apartheid. He also based it on his time as the president of the Liberal Party of South Africa. In the foreword, Paton says that the book contains both real (historic) and fictitious characters. Two persons he references were still living at the time of his writing: Helen Joseph and Archbishop Trevor ...
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Alan Paton
Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels '' Cry, the Beloved Country'' (1948), '' Too Late the Phalarope'' (1953), and the short story ''The Waste Land''. Early life Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg in the Colony of Natal (now South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province), the son of a civil servant (who was of Christadelphian belief) and his wife. After attending Maritzburg College for high school, Paton earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Natal in his hometown. He also got a diploma in education. After graduation, Paton worked as a teacher, first at the Ixopo High School, and subsequently at Maritzburg College. Early career Paton served as the principal of Diepkloof Reformatory for young (native African) offenders from 1935 to 1949. He introduced controversial "progressive" reforms, including policies on open dormitories, work permits, and home visitation. T ...
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Paul Kruger
Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904), better known as Paul Kruger, was a South African politician. He was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and State President of the South African Republic (or Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed , he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom and admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero. Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South ...
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YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and , there were approximately 14.8billion videos in total. On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Google expanded YouTube's business model of generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by and for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subs ...
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South African Broadcasting Corporation
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the public broadcaster in South Africa, and provides 19 radio stations (Amplitude modulation, AM/Frequency modulation, FM) as well as 6 television broadcasts and 3 OTT Services to the general public. It is one of the largest of State-owned enterprises of South Africa, South Africa's state-owned enterprises and the biggest state broadcaster in Africa. Opposition politicians and civil society often criticise the SABC, accusing it of being a mouthpiece for whichever political party is in majority power, thus currently the ruling African National Congress; during the apartheid era it was accused of playing the same role for the National Party (South Africa), National Party government. Company history Early years Radio broadcasting in Union of South Africa, South Africa began in 1923, under the auspices of South African Railways, before three radio services were licensed: the Association of Scientific and Technical Societies (AS&T ...
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