Oprah nearly gave up SA school

2007-01-04 12:30

London - US television talkshow queen Oprah Winfrey said on Wednesday that she nearly gave up her $40m (about R280m) school project in South Africa after people failed at first to understand her vision for it.

In an interview with BBC television, Oprah also said she hoped the school would inspire governments, institutions and other people who had even more money than she had, to launch other projects for the poor in Africa.

The school, she said, aimed to prepare South African girls - most of them black, but some of them white and "colored" - to become leaders not only in politics, but also in science, the arts, medicine and law.

"I wasn't just trying to make a school that would develop political leaders," she told the network a day after she opened the school at a star-studded ceremony featuring former president Nelson Mandela.

'Cumbersome and difficult'

"I'm looking for the opportunity to change the paradigm, to change the way not only how these girls think ... but to also change the way a culture feels about what women can do," she said.

"My biggest struggle here ... was getting other people in this country to understand my vision," Oprah told the network.

"For a long, long time it was cumbersome and difficult. And, I gave up about three years ago."

But she changed her mind after officials were going to name it after her anyway and "I had to have some control over what's going to happen", she said.

"I think there's some residual apartheid effect here," she said, adding that many "people didn't think that African girls should have such beautiful surroundings" at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls at Henley-on-Klip, south of Johannesburg.

"Everybody is calling it lavish. I call it comfortable," she said. "Why would I build tin shacks for girls who come from tin shacks?"

Oprah said: "I'm prepared to take care of all those costs" of running the school in addition to the $40m it took to plan and build it."

Others could follow

She hoped her example would be an inspiration for others.

"Obviously, I have a lot of money, but there are a lot of other people who have a lot more money than I do.

"If one person can do this, imagine what institutions, other people who have great, great enormous resources can do?"

- AFP