Ou Raadsaal Ou Raadsaal The Ou Raadsaal (English: "Old Council Hall") is a historic building in Pretoria, South Africa, located on the south side of Church Square. The Ou Raadsaal housed the Volksraad, the parliament of the South African Republic, from 1891 to 1902. The Ou Raadsaal was commissioned in the late 19th century by the South African Republic as the new seat of government in Pretoria, and was designed by Dutch architect Sytze Wierda in a Renaissance Revival style. The contract for construction was granted to John Johnstone Kirkness, a builder from the Orkney Islands with a prolific building career in
Ou (surname) considered to both descend from the ruling family of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. With the / variant being descendants of Ou An (), a wealthy and charitable merchant who came to the attention of Emperor Jing of Han, who ordered that Ou An do without the radical 'qian' () from , a character that means 'to owe'. Many Ou have their ancestral roots in the Longgang, Zhongshan, Shunde, Panyu, and Xinhui areas of Guangdong. Ou (surname) Ou is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surnames / and /, which share a common origin with