Nomvuyo Mzamane felt the wrath of Oprah. Now she's trying to clear her name.
Mzamane served as the principal of Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa before being dismissed on Monday by the daytime queen in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that occurred under Mzamane's watch.
The former headmistress is defending herself from accusations that she failed to take action after being alerted by students that a dorm matron had fondled one pupil and verbally and physically assaulted at least six others, aged 13 to 15. Another alleged victim was a 23-year-old.
The allegations didn't come to light until one girl reportedly ran away from the school and alerted authorities. Winfrey immediately fired the staffer, 27-year-old Tiny Virginia Makopo. She was subsequently arrested and has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts, including indecent assault, verbal abuse and enticing a minor through the commission of an indecent or immoral act. Makopo is free after posting bail Monday. She is due back in court Dec. 13.
Mzamane was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation into the abuse, but Winfrey announced on Monday that the principal's one-year contract, due to expire on Dec. 31, would not be renewed. Winfrey said she determined that Mzamane ignored girls' complaints about the abuse and tried to hide them from Winfrey.Not so, according to Mzamane.
"Contrary to reports, I had no knowledge of abuse. I did not and would never participate in any such cover-up," she said in a statement issued by her Philadelphia attorney, Timothy McGown.
Mzamane says that she was "shocked" and "saddened" by the revelations and would have done something about it had she known."
As the head of the academy, my track record had been of one who acted decisively and in the best interests of the child where there was event a hint of inappropriate speech or action on campus," she added.
Winfrey—herself a victim of sexual abuse when she was a teenager—flew to South Africa twice to meet with the students, whom she has referred to as her "children."
During the first trip, she and a three-person investigating team gathered statements from the alleged victims. In her second visit a week later, Winfrey tearfully apologized to the girls and their families and promised to clean house to ensure a "safe, open and receptive" learning environment.
"I take their futures, and the possibility for what their futures hold, very personally," Winfrey said during a press conference Monday. "What I know is no one, not the accused nor any persons, can destroy the dream I have held or that the girls have at this school."
The $46 million academy located at Henley-on-Klip, just south of Johannesburg, opened amid great fanfare, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in January attended by former South African President Nelson Mandela, Sydney Poitier, Chris Tucker, Tina Turner and Mary J. Blige.
Meanwhile, the school scandal isn't the only headache for Winfrey this week.She yanked an award-winning children's tale from a list of recommended titles on her Website after learning the book's author was a white supremacist and ex-speechwriter for Alabama's former segregationist governor George Wallace.
A spokeswoman for the talk show said Tuesday that Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree, penned in 1976, was listed "in error."
Little Tree is a memoir-style fictional novel of an orphaned boy raised in the Tennessee mountains by his Cherokee grandparents. Aside from Carter's background, critics have complained that the book uses stereotypical imagery and the idea of the "Noble Savage" to give a false depiction of Cherokee culture.