Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [201]
But Oprah had already committed her millions to poor young girls in South Africa, where the high-school graduation rate was 76 percent in some places. She preferred to make a difference among high-achieving students there than to low-achieving students in America, where she said poor children did not appreciate education. “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”
Through Oprah’s Angel Network she began directing more and more of the monies she collected from her viewers to South Africa. An analysis of IRS returns from 2003 through 2007 indicates that nearly 10 percent of the donations she generated from others went to that country:
Oprah had fallen in love with Africa, and the continent became her new criteria for judging people. When she and Gayle attended the wedding of Scott Sanders and his partner, Gayle offered a toast to the couple. She said Oprah had given her the invitation list for the opening of the Oprah Winfrey Academy in South Africa and mentioned she was inviting Sanders, the producer of The Color Purple—The Musical. Gayle said that she had asked, “Is he Africa-worthy?” Oprah assured her that Sanders was indeed “Africa-worthy.” Gayle’s compliment, well-meant, seemed awkward and unkind in front of Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, and was officiating as the minister marrying Sanders, because she had not been deemed worthy to be invited to the opening of Oprah’s school.
Newly enthralled with her African roots, Oprah imagined herself a descendant of Zulu warriors. “I always wondered what it would be like if it turned out I am a South African,” she told a crowd of thirty-two hundred people attending her “Live Your Best Life” seminar in Johannesburg. “I feel so at home here. Do you know that I actually am one? I went in search of my roots and had my DNA tested, and I am a Zulu.” At that point she had not yet received the results from Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr., who was having her mitochondrial DNA tested for a PBS show titled Finding Oprah’s Roots.
“If you tell me I’m not Zulu, I am going to be very upset,” she warned him. “When I’m in Africa, I always feel that I look Zulu. I feel connected to the Zulu tribe.” Gates looked nervous when he had to inform her that her ancestors were from Liberia, and Oprah looked crestfallen. She took no pride in being associated with a country colonized by freed U.S. slaves. Gates had to stop filming for a few minutes, because he said Oprah needed to compose herself.
“Her face fell when she found out she was descended from Liberians and not Zulus,” said Badi Foster, president of the Phelps Stokes fund, which focuses on strengthening communities in Africa and the Americas. “She now needs to mend her fences with Liberia and not be so dismissive.… She flew Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf [first woman elected president of an African nation], to do her show but then she ignored her and spent all the time interviewing Queen Rania [of Jordan], the gorgeous young wife of King Abdullah.”
From 2000 to 2006, Oprah battled South Africa’s government to build her school on the twenty-two-acre site outside Johannesburg, on Henley-on-Klip, that had been recommended by the South African Department of Education. She did not like the initial designs because she said they looked like chicken coops or barracks. “Why would I build tin shacks for girls who come from tin shacks?” The government planners told her that African children sleep on dirt floors in huts with no water or electricity, or share mattresses with relatives, so even the simplest environment would be a luxury for them. Oprah rejected their attitude as well as their plans, and hired her own architects. “I am creating everything in this school that I would have wanted for myself so the girls will have the absolute best that my imagination