I hope this is true, since I live in Cape Town!!!
Here's the website address:
Saturday Argus
Rowling chooses Cape Town for Potter launch
May 30 2003 at 10:42PM
By Douglas Carew
The world's most popular author, JK Rowling, will celebrate her latest literary offering in Cape Town when Harry Potter mania grips the world at 1.01 am South African time on Saturday June 21.
The Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in the Harry Potter series, will be released simultaneously across the world, and Rowling has chosen to be in Cape Town, rather than, for example, New York where the book will be released at the far more reasonable hour of 7.01pm.
Thousands of fanatics are expected to attend Potter parties as South African book stores have taken the highly unusual step of staying open after midnight. Capetonians can therefore read the first words of the new book at the same time as fans across the planet.
It is not known if Rowling will attend any of the early morning parties at book stores in the city, including ones at Canal Walk and the V&A Waterfront.
The contents of the book are a closely guarded secret, and interest is so intense that earlier this month four people were arrested in Britain after they stole two copies from a printing house and tried to sell them to the Sun tabloid newspaper.
Therese Herbert of Jonathan Ball Publishers said the company would bring in about 50 000 copies of the book, considerably more than for other novelists or even Rowling's previous releases.
