Oprah Winfrey is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self titled, multi award winning talk show, which has become the highest rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century,the greatest black philanthropist in American history and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood. Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,which a Yale study claims broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. criticized for unleashing confession culture, promoting controversial self help ideas,and an emotion centered approach,she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.
Oprah Winfrey accepted an honorary degree from a central South African university infamous for troubled race relations. She accepted the degree from a South African university that has been called a model of reconciliation for its response to a racist student video that shocked the nation. Winfrey came to a school where five years ago, four white students made a video humiliating black housekeeping staff they are shown eating a stew the students had mimed spiking with urine and expressing opposition to integrating the historically white University of the Free State. Jonathan Jansen, who in 2009 became the university's first black rector, called for the four to be forgiven and rehabilitated. Jansen withstood accusations he was conceding too much to racists as he led the university, the students and the cleaners in a closely watched discussion of the role forgiveness could play in post apartheid South Africa. In a campus ceremony earlier this year, the students' public apology was accepted by the cleaners.
After receiving her honorary education doctorate Friday, Winfrey called five cleaners to the stage and pronounced them heroes. Winfrey said she had approached Jansen after reading about his work, and accepted an invitation to come to speak to students. University officials decided to make it a grand event. A roar from hundreds of people gathered outside first alerted those inside the university auditorium that Winfrey was about to enter for a ceremony for one that offered as much pomp, circumstance, song and dance as a full class's graduation. She threw her arms out with joy when told she was now a member of the university family a "Kovsie." Other moments moved her to tears. She kneeled on a padded stool to have her degree bestowed, flashing red stiletto heels to the cheering audience of all races.
The event brought international media to normally quiet Bloemfontein, the farming center where the century old, 31,000 student university is based. Susan Mshumpela, a 37 year old Bloemfontein native, came to the ceremony proudly dressed in the black robes she wore when she accepted her MBA from Free State last year. Mshumpela, operations manager for an agency that helps small businesses, said she hoped Winfrey's visit would give her alma mater a chance to tell the world about its strengths. "The eyes of the world are here," she said. "I don't think a person of her stature could just accept an honorary degree from just any university. She would want to be associated with a university of stature."
Nadipha Jacobs, a black student, says the university is growing more tolerant.Chantell De Reuck, a white graduate student strolling across campus Friday with her friend Jacobs, said the divides that are healing weren't just along racial lines. When she arrived as an undergraduate in 1999, she was among only six English speaking students in a dorm dominated by Afrikaners, descendants of early Dutch settlers who speak Afrikaans. The English students stuck together then. Not now, De Reuck said.
De Reuck said black and white students at the university can connect to Winfrey's personal story of early years of struggle and abuse, and find inspiration in her current success.Winfrey is a frequent visitor to South Africa, where she opened a school in 2007 dedicated to giving bright young women of all races opportunities in a society where they are handicapped by conservative traditions as well as the poor schools that are a legacy of apartheid. Her school's first class just graduated, overcoming early setbacks that included a scandal over a dormitory supervisor accused of trying to kiss and fondle students. The supervisor was acquitted of sexual assault charges last year. In a passage that the citation accompanying Winfrey's honorary doctorate, the 152nd awarded by the university, said Winfrey "has truly become a South African. She did so because she believed that there was important work to be done here, and she wanted to be part of what Nelson Mandela and others had begun.Previous recipients of Free State honorary degrees include anti apartheid icons Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Winfrey's visit overlapped with that of another famous Chicagoan Michelle Obama, wife of the U.S. president.
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