AP INTERVIEW:
Winfrey celebrates 1st graduates

[January 13, 2012]  HENLEY-ON-KLIP, South Africa (AP) -- The first graduation at Oprah Winfrey's elite school for South African girls is a time to celebrate, and also contemplate better ways to help more struggling young Africans, she said in an interview Friday.

Of the 75 students who started at her school in 2007, 72 who will march in a graduation ceremony Saturday. All are headed to universities in South Africa and the United States.

By comparison, more than half a million members of the class of 2011 across South Africa disappeared before the 496,000 remaining took their final exams. Only a quarter of those who graduated did well enough to qualify for university study.

"We're taking a victory lap here, for transformation," Winfrey said. "Every single girl is going to leave here with something greater to offer the world than her body."

South Africa is struggling to overcome the inequalities of apartheid, which ended in 1994. The country has too few schools at all levels, and many lack such basics as libraries and are staffed by undereducated teachers.

Winfrey spent $40 million on the campus to give girls a quality education, but acknowledged Friday that hers "is not a sustainable model for most people in most countries."

But she added: "Not a dollar has been wasted. The investment is measured in the life and possibility and dream of each girl. It's an expensive investment, but not a wasted one."

Another new class starts at Winfrey's school next week. But to help more young Africans, Winfrey said she would be working with established philanthropies to identify schools that can be strengthened with money and by adapting some of the practices of her school, including creating strong support networks for students.

Winfrey said she also might work more quietly in the future, to spare those she helps the kind of scrutiny celebrity draws.

The achievements at Winfrey's school came despite turmoil at the school in its first years.

A woman working as a dormitory matron at the school was accused of abusing teenagers soon after it was opened. She was acquitted in 2010. Winfrey, who has spoken of being abused as a child and called the allegations against the matron crushing, and has said the trial's outcome was "profoundly" disappointing.

Winfrey settled a defamation lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by the school's former headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane, who claimed Winfrey defamed her in remarks made in the wake of the scandal.

Last year, a baby born to a student at the school was found dead. The events would have been newsworthy had they involved any school, but drew particularly frenzied attention because of the Winfrey connection.

As a celebrity, Winfrey said: "All of your mistakes are amplified and show up on the evening news."

[Associated Press; By DONNA BRYSON]

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