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Nongqawuse had a fatal charisma. She was so smooth-tongued that she led an entire South African tribe to oblitearion. And she was just 14 years old.
On hot, still day in 1856 she sat on a rock overlooking a pool in the Gxara River and, as she stared at the placid water, she imagined she saw faces reflected there. She ran back to her village and told the elders of her tribe, the Gcaleka Xhosas, that she had seen the faces of her ancestors and tole they had spoken to her. They had told her that they were ready to resurrected to lead a holy war againts the Europeans who were taking over their country.
But, said Nongqawuse, the ancestors would only return to earth at a price. The tribe would first have to proove their faith by destroying all their worldly wealth. They would have to burn their crops and slaughter all their cattle - otherwise they would be turned into reptiles and insects and destroyed in a tempest.
February 18, 1857, was the appointed day on which the ancestral dead would be reborn to fight again. The Gcaleka Xhosas met the deadline. They spent almost a year taking part in a prolonged orgy of ceremonial massacre and destruction.
Eventually the great day arrived. The hungry tribes folk rose early for fear of missing the promised miracle. Nongqawuse told them to watch the sun rise and to chart its progress across the sky. It would, she predicted, halt in the heavens - then retrace its course to set for the first time in the east. Throughout the day, the sun continued on its inevitable course. Tribes people, half blinded trough staring at it, wailed in despair. And, as the sun died in the west, their despair turn to anger. Even hungrier that they had been at dwan, they peered around for the young prophetess - but she had fled.
Nongqawuse sought sanctuary with the British in King William's Town. They placed her, for her own protection, on Robben Island. Later she moved secretly to Eastern Province, where she lived on a farm until her death in 1898.
The tribe she had led to ruin were not so lucky. They had no food, nor the means of providing themselves with any. Though many were helped by neighbouring tribes and European charity, 25,000 died of starvation.
Australia's Sydney Opera House is awe-inspiring-a beautiful, soaring, shell-like, edifice standing on a peninsula that justs into the city's magnificent harbour.
Sydneysiders agree that it is worth every penny of the 5 million pounds it was estimated that it would cost. Unfortunately, the estimate was a bit out - 55 million pounds out, give or take a million or so.
The Sydney Opera House is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. In addition to representing Sydney, the opera house has also become a symbol for the country of Australia throughout the world. Resting majestically on Bennelong Point as it reaches into Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Opera House is truly an unforgettable sight. The original plan to build the opera house was put forth in 1950, and designed by John Utzon. Interestingly enough, his vision was more advanced than architectural and engineering abilities of the decade, and it wasn’t until 1973 that his ideas were finally put into place. The doors were opened by Queen Elizabeth II on October 20th of that year, with its opening show, War and Peace.
For not only is the Sydney Opera House as one of a modern building in the world, but it also turned out to be the most expensive, the most difficult to construct and the longest to complete in that time.
The design of the Opera House began as rough drawings made in the early 1950's by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who conceived the idea while gazing at Elsinore Castle, the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Utzon submitted his ideas when the New South Wales government ran an international competition for the best plans for their prestigious cultural showpiece. He won and moved to Australia to launch the project, which eventually got under way in March 1959.
It did not take long for Utzon to discover that his original concept, grandiose as it was, did not work. For a start, the architect had planned the ten massive shells of the roof as thin skins of self supporting concrete, but, since they were up to 200 feet high, the shells had to be supported by hefty arches. The redesigning of the roof made it the heaviest in the world - 26.000 tons, not including the million white tiles needed to face it.
As costs zoomed, so did the blood pressure of the New South Wales leaders. They launched lotteries with enormous prizes to help pay the bills for their white elephant. Plans were trimmed back so that, in size and seating, the auditoriums did not match those of opera houses already existing. There were stories of walls being built, then pulled down again so that workmen could move their equipment from one part of the building to another.
A tough Minister of Works, David Hughes, was ordered to devote himself virtually full-time to the Opera House project. He and the architect clashed bitterly and publicly. Utzon resisted alterations pushed through by Hughes and claimed that the minister was spoiling the work already done. He said Hughes had wasted more than 15 million pounds and lost over two or three years' work by pulling down and rebuilding parts of the structure. Hughes replied that Utzon had described the Opera House as a symphony - 'and if he had had his way it would remain an unfinished symphony'.
In 1966, Utzon left Australia. He complained that he had not been responsible for any of the original estimates on which the project had been given the go-ahead and said that they had always been unrealistic. The project continued under a consortium of Australian architects who got to grips with the problems of the interior, which in four-and-a-half acres had to accommodate an opera and ballet theater, a concert hall, a recording theater, a cinema, and numerous restaurants and public rooms.
The fate of the operatic auditorium was sealed when the Australian Broadcasting Commission won the right to run the biggest hall, which had originally been earmarked for opera. So operatic and ballet performances were banished to the smaller theater, which holds only 1,500 people - 1,300 fewer than the theater from which the resident Sydney company were waiting to move.
As opening date approached, more problems cropped up. No car parks were considered until it was too late to fit them in. Plans for an underground car area beneath a nearby public park had to be dropped when construction workers refused to pull down two ancient trees on the historic site where Aborigines had performed the first native dance for British settlers in 1811. Because they had nowhere to park, members of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra threatened not to play. They said they did not fancy hauling their instruments through the streets of the city in full evening dress. They also inquired how they could be expected to get their 75 players into an orchestra pit that had been designed to seat only 60. The ballet company complained that off-stage facilities were a joke. The lack of space at the side of the opera stage meant that if a ballet dancer took a flying leap he would flatten himself against a brick wall.
Many artists complained about the lack of facilities for rehearsals and the absence of changing rooms. They even complained about the toilets , which they said either did not work or collapsed underneath them. But last-minute repairs were made and eventually a local newspaper reported: 'It's all cisterns go'.
The Sydney Opera House was opened by the Queen in October 1973. Opera lovers and concert goers from all parts of Australia, along with dignitaries and guests invited from around the world, all left the amazing building later that night with praise for the awe-inspiring concept that, despite all the odds, had at last been proved a success - for the building had impressed almost everyone who had seen it.
