Superstar diva Mariah Carey arrived in Cape Town on Thursday to lead the festivities at the glamorous opening of Sol Kerzner's new hotel. One&Only, next to the Two Oceans Aquarium in the V&A Waterfront, opens on Thursday night after an investment rumoured to have totalled R1-billion. The internationally famous hotelier - best known locally for building the vast Sun City out of the dry bushveld in the Pilanesberg mountains in the North-West province - is expected to put on one of his famously lavish shows to open his Cape Town masterpiece. A Hollywood-style red carpet is expected to be rolled out to welcome stars Robert de Niro, Sharon Stone, rapper Mos Def and Bebe Winans. Former model Yasmin le Bon will be there, with daughter Saffron. Matt Damon, who is in Cape Town working on a film about the 1995 Rugby World Cup-winning Springboks, will join them, and had supper with de Niro and Kerzner on Wednesday night. Damon will play Springbok captain Francois Pienaar in the Clint Eastwood-directed flick. Local stars attending tonight are said to include Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Sibongile Khumalo and Jonathan Butler. The 131-room hotel is marketed as a super-luxury "six-star" establishment, and guests will be fed from two restaurants bearing celebrity chefs' names. Gordon Ramsay of London will open one of his "maze" restaurants, and alongside him will be "Nobu", after Nobu Matsuhisa, the Japanese-born chef who is widely credited with bringing sushi to the Western world. The hotel was designed by Capetonian architectural firms Dennis Fabian Berman and Ruben Reddy and built by contractors WBHO. Thursday night's festivities will be hosted by Kerzner and his wife Heather and Moss Mashishi, the former head of SA Tourism who heads Matemeku Investments, Kerzner's local partner.
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