ONE DIRECTION fans camped at Cape Town International Airport for 15 hours hoping to catch a glimpse of the pop group as they arrived in the city ahead of their scheduled concert on Wednesday.
Nicole Bouah, 17, and her friends, Sabrina de Gois and Danielle Stanton, have been fans of the group for four years.
“I fell in love with the group after watching a YouTube video of their performance on The X-Factor. They blew me away and that performance has stuck with me.”
One Direction is an English-Irish pop boy band based in London. It comprises members Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. The fifth member, Zayn Malik, recently announced that he was leaving the band.
The group will be performing at Cape Town Stadium on Wednesday as part of their tour of South Africa. Over the weekend they performed at the FNB Stadium in Joburg.
On Sunday night, the three teens decided to camp at the airport hoping that the pop group would be flying to Cape Town immediately after their Joburg leg of their tour.
“We were hoping to catch of a glimpse of our favourite band, like fans in Johannesburg did,” said Nicole.
“We arrived at the airport at 11pm and left just after 2pm. We are so devastated that we did not see them.”
The teen said she and her friends had already bought tickets for the show and arranged outfits. “All we need to do now is organise our lifts and we will be set.”
She said she was looking forward to hearing “her song”, Stockholm Syndrome from their album Four, and seeing Horan.
Sabrina said they were hoping to get a lift with Danielle’s mother when she went to work at 5.45am on Wednesday.
“The idea is to get there as early as possible and beat the traffic. Also we are going to pack ourselves a picnic basket and blanket.”
Sabrina said she was a bit sad about Malik leaving the group .
“Although it was upsetting, I mean I would rather let him leave the group and be happy than him staying in the group and being miserable. We don’t want him to be sad when he is performing.”
She said she was looking forward to the group performing Girl Almighty, which is also from the album Four.
“I love the tempo of the song, it’s one of my favourites.”