Halo of 'Angel of Soweto' slips following exposé of school

South Africa Letter: If only Jackey Maarohanye had learnt from her mentor Nelson Mandela.

Whereas the Nobel Peace Prize winner has always eschewed the title of saint - unless, as he once wryly observed, "you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying" - the woman known to the world as the "Angel of Soweto" unashamedly rejoiced in her heavenly reputation.

The founder of a township school that claimed to rescue orphaned children from violence and abuse, she had been feted by everyone from Bono to Bill Clinton.

Mandela was a financial sponsor, so too Oprah Winfrey who gave $1.1 million (€827,000) to the school after learning of its "100 per cent pass rate" for students who had once endured harrowing suffering.

The problem is - if an alarming number of the school's "orphans" can be believed - those sending it money were sold a lie.

Speaking openly for the first time about the school in Klipspruit, Soweto, former students admitted that not only had they failed state examinations but they weren't orphans at all.

Some of the children told how Mama Jackey - as "the Angel" was known in both affection and fear - would script and rehearse horror stories for them to recite to visiting foreign donors.

Speaking to M-Net's Carte Blanche, an investigative TV show, Lebogang Makheta said she had fabricated a story about her parents being stabbed and shot to death in political violence.

"I spoke to Mama Jackey and she told me that whatever they ask me, I must say it the way she wrote down because it would help us get sponsors."

Makheta, whose mother is still alive, told media in 2001 that she was involved with drugs and gangsters. Five years later, though, she said "none of that was true. It was all lies, just lies."

Another student recalled that, when a delegation from the school visited the United Nations in 2001, Maarohanye said: "Today you better cry seriously. . . you better cry more than the other days you have been crying."

Others claimed the school operated in an atmosphere of intimidation and fear, with select pupils given a free rein to police the area by force.

Maarohanye has also been accused of taking school fees from children's families - despite receiving donations for this purpose from charitable foundations. As for the quality of education, Carte Blanchesaid it had been unable to find a single bursary beneficiary at the school who had graduated from a tertiary institution.

Maarohanye has now been charged by the police with a range of offences, including public violence, theft, kidnapping and assault.

The Angel's halo may have slipped but she is not the only one embarrassed by the episode.

Donors, advocates and the media were all found wanting when it came to checking out a story that from the outset, seemed too good to be true.

The other board members of Maarohanye's charity, the Ithuteng Trust, have distanced themselves from the controversy, while supporters - including Mandela and Clinton - have requested copies of the TV investigation, expressing shock in the process.

As well as Winfrey, who once described Mama Jackey as "a living angel", the school had attracted influential backers, ranging from the US National Basketball Association to actors Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck.

A number of documentaries were made about the project, most recently Ithuteng: Never Stop Learning, which picked up a range of awards in the US this year.

The film, which had its American television premiere on HBO at the weekend, featured extensive interviews with at least one child who subsequently admitted to have lied about his past.

Despite knowing about these allegations, the US producers went ahead with the broadcast.

Maarohanye's philosophy of "tough love" fitted certain preconceived ideas about how best to deal with wayward youths. Whether that influenced the extent of her support is a matter for debate, but what seems certain is that she knew explicitly what funding agencies wanted to hear.

In that perhaps there is a lesson for all donors in the developing world: beware of those claiming to perform miracles.