Silent Code @SilentCode_

Lives of Black South Africans, 30 years after democracy. Cape Town, South Africa.

📍Cape Town international Airport, South Africa🇿🇦

The real story about the once-glitz hotel in Cape Town - ✨The Ritz✨ 🏨 Storeys: 23 🏨 Height: 80m 🏨 Penthouses: 2 🏨 Hotel rooms: 213 🏨 Year construction ended: 1970 🏨 Location: The Ritz Hotel, corner of Main & Camberwell Roads, Sea Point, #CapeTown, #SouthAfrica This was an award-winning and innovative hotel for its time due to the way it was built in a modular form. The bathrooms and bedrooms were all prebuilt off-site and dropped in one by one from the top of the #hotel. It won many awards in the early 70’s for the way in which it was constructed. Mr Barney Hurwitz - the owner of the hotel - he owned a pharmaceutical company. He contracted Protea Hotels in the mid 80’s to manage, market and administrate the hotel for many years. The hotel general manager at the time of opening was the late Alan Romburgh. The deputy general manager was a gentleman by the name of John Watson who went on to manage the Peninsula. This dynamic team is well-known for making a huge success of the iconic hotel in its early days and in a very short space of time. Plenty of celebrities and sports stars frequented The Ritz as well as their very popular night clubs (Paschas and In-Excess to name a few) on the ground floor during the mid 80’s. In-Excess was in the basement of the hotel. Nelson Mandela was one of the guests who stayed at The Ritz after his release from Victor Verster Prison. During his 2.5 month stay, the hotel manager at the time told me that he was the only guest that he ever knew to make up his own bed and clean his own room everyday. He also mentioned that Mr Mandela would go for a walk outside on the Sea Point promenade every morning at 4:30am, accompanied by his security. When Mr Mandela would return from his walks, he would have tea with the hotel manager. He would tell him how The Ritz was the one building that he could always see above the skyline from Robben Island and how sitting in The Ritz and looking back at Robben Island was fascinating for him. In 1989 - 1994, Bernard MD Cassar took over the hotel as general manager. I wanted to give him a huge, special thanks for taking the time to chat with me about this iconic building so that I could learn more about its history and share it with you. Bernard went on to join the Protea Hotels board of directors and became a shareholder. He mentions that during his time as GM, the hotel was running in excess of 80% room occupancy. There was a weekend stay special where hotel guests would pay R19.50 for the entire weekend. For many years, this hotel was infamous for the amount of suicides that took place in the building. Sadly there are records of some guests who jumped out of hotel bathroom windows and fell 21 stories down to their deaths. On another occasion - The Ritz was on the front page of South African newspapers for 7 days straight. An axe murder had taken place in room 1803. The famous fine-dining revolving restaurant at the top that makes a full rotation every hour put this hotel on the map. It was called Top of The Ritz. Sydney Joseph was the first restaurant manager of this establishment. Eventually Protea no longer managed the hotel and it became independent again. There was also a period where a company called African Sky, owned by Gustav Krampe, managed the hotel. Gustav was the Protea Hotel’s Food and Beverage manager who went on to create his own management company. In 2014, the Ritz hotel was renovated. In 2006, The Ritz hotel was refurbished and Cape Town’s only revolving restaurant was re-opened. In 2016, celebrity couple Nicky van der Walt and Lee-Ann Liebenberg, planned to re-open the iconic Ritz Hotel in Sea Point, Cape Town. They planned to transform the hotel by investing R110 million into hotel renovations. They were going to revive the top floor restaurant called Casa and the head chef was to be Cape Town’s well-loved, Bertus Basson. The hotel was going to have its own nightclub where Nicky says Black Coffee would perform. There was also going to be an exclusive Dom Perignon Champagne Lounge. Nicky’s hotel management company signed a 20-year lease agreement and rental for the building was R1.3 million per month. Almost 2 years passed with no opening progress of the property (despite a swanky opening party) when the landlord legally cancelled the lease agreement. Nicky’s company was ordered by the court to vacate the property. They took occupation of the property for renovations without ever paying a cent towards rent. Nicky then refused to vacate the property until the landlord paid his company R20 million in damages. Eventually, Nicky resigned from his own company and they vacated the building. More recently, Nicky van der Walt owns and operates TANG restaurant in #Johannesburg and at the V&A Waterfront. The building is owned by Ritz Plaza (Proprietary) Limited - a family controlled entity. Currently Excellerate JHI manages the retail shops on the ground floor. The hotel itself is still empty and not in use. The hotel has been closed since July 2018. Got any memories connected to this once romantically royal Ritz? ✨ Please share below.

I miss Dalian in summer. When there is sea fog, it looks like a fairyland. 夏の大連が恋しくなって、海霧がある時、仙境のようです。 #大連 #中国 #Dalian #China #大连 #写真好きな人と繫がりたい #ファインダー越しの私の世界ᅠ

Racing 92 (French pronunciation: is a French professional rugby union club based in the Hauts-de-Seine department. The club plays its home matches at the 30,681-capacity domed stadium Paris La Défense Arena, located near the La Défense business district.

Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimental tools to probe these phenomena.

Activate any of the below TOP Tunes brought to you by Telkom Ringa Music and stand to WIN Great prizes in our Summer Promotion! 1. Bird of Paradise *190*20# 2. Jerusalema *190*27# 3. Jamaican *190*29#

Rules of integral calculus(II) Visualization|Animation|Interactive applet | @geogebra geogebra.org/u/daniel+mentr… #geogebra #math #science #iteachmath #mtbos #visualization #elearning @geometry @bancoche

Xinghai Square of Dalian at night. 夜の大連の星海広場。 #大連 #中国 #Dalian #China #大连 #写真好きな人と繫がりたい #ファインダー越しの私の世界ᅠ

A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884.

GEOMETRY/GOLDEN RATIO rafael-araujo.com

Ascento: Automated Outdoor Security Patrolling Ascento supports professionals to secure, maintain and inspect their outdoor assets by reducing the intervention times and augmenting their data capturing capability Video source: @ascento_robot #robotics #tech #engineering #robot

This video envisioning EctoLife, the world’s first concept of artificial womb facility. [📹 Hashem Al-Ghaili]

Looks very much like apartheid. Gaza and Tel Aviv.

@stats_feed The economies of the G7 (Group of Seven) and BRICS countries from 1980 to 2023 in nominal terms 📊

They kept on shooting.

O(n²), which is usually pronounced “Big O squared”. The letter “n” here represents the input size, and the function “g(n) = n²” inside the “O()” gives us an idea of how complex the algorithm is with respect to the input size.

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Graph is an abstract data type that is meant to implement the undirected graph and directed graph concepts from the field of graph theory within mathematics.

Starship soaring above the foggy shores of Earth

#NASA in #CAPETOWN🤔😳😳 WHY??