Barrack Obama WHAT!

Here is what I wrote today in The Times newspaper: 

"R1000-a-head Obama inauguration celebration sold out!"

WHILE some lucky South Africans will be in Washington DC today to witness Barack Obama being sworn in as the 44th president of the US, many more will celebrate from home.

Several local television stations will broadcast the event this evening.

Four pupils from St Stithians Girls’ College in Randburg, north of Johannesburg, are among the South Africans in the US capital to witness the historic inauguration.

Katie Drennan, Carla Eskinazi, Chloe Johnson and Kate Ramsden have been invited to attend the prestigious Obama inauguration ball as members of a delegation to the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference.

They left South Africa on Friday.

South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Welile Nhlapo, will represent the country at the inauguration.

The Times’s foreign editor, Jackie May, says freezing Washington is spilling over with visitors from around the world.

“Everybody is talking about hope and change, and the hopefulness is almost too much to deal with. So much hope even cynical political commentators are going mushy,” May says on her blog.

The biggest formal party in South Africa has been jointly organised by several organisations, including the American Chamber of Commerce, the American Society, and Republicans and Democrats Abroad.

The five-star event — “The African Celebration of the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as America’s 44th President” — is being held at Johannesburg’s Montecasino ballroom tonight.

The R1000-a-head seats are, unsurprisingly, sold out.

Amid the inauguration excitement comes news that acclaimed local movie producer Anant Singh is to make a documentary about the US’s first black president called Barack Obama: People’s President.