Reports - Coldplay to visit South Africa in October 2011 (announcement expected Monday)

Coldplay will visit South Africa in October 2011 for two concerts, one in Joburg and one in Cape Town, according to hints from certain local media outlets and DJs overnight. But there is a media embargo on releasing official announcements through the stations until Monday morning - so we've heard. More discussion on the South Africa concert dates is at the Coldplay Live forum now.

That embargo is being maintained by Prime Media’s radio outlets until tomorrow. Only then will an announcement about a visit by "one of England's biggest arena bands who are coming to South Africa for the first time" (as hinted at on one of the stations yesterday afternoon) be made. Earlier today, 94.7/KFM radio jock Mark Pilgrim also made a number of not so subtle hints about the announcement on-air, in between using Viva la Vida exerpts during the jingles.

His 'clues' included a suggestion that the band has 4 members and that they hail from the United Kingdom. The clincher by far though was his suggestion that one of band members has a child named Apple (Chris Martin does with his wife, actress Gwyneth Paltrow).

With that sort of information around, it’s really not surprising that well connected people (connected in the interwebs sense) are again in a position to beat the official information release. Suspicions are for earlier in the month rather than later as Coldplay are scheduled to appear at the Rock in Rio festival on 1st October, and could hop across to visit South Africa from there.

At least that is what all the rumour and gossip is telling us. You’ve gotta love a good and groovy live concert rumour mill. The promoters and media houses get forced into meeting press release embargoes and the Twitterverse gets to talk all they want. Should the information turn out to be accurate – and there’s no obvious reason why it won’t – then the concerts in South Africa will be the only true Coldplay concerts for 2011. All their other scheduled 2011 live appearances so far are at Music Festivals.

According to the Bla Bla blog, dates being suggested are for Cape Town only at this stage, and the dats they've picked up is the 5th - a Wednesday. Could it be that Joburg will see weekend dates around those? We’ll wait and see what news Monday brings, and will add the official concert dates and ticket information to this as soon as it is confirmed.