Student Says She Wants to Make Family and 'Mom Oprah' Proud

Jan. 3, 2006 — -- Many of the girls chosen to attend the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa have faced devastating tragedies -- rape, poverty, losing their parents to AIDS.

One of those girls is Buhle Zulu, a 12-year-old girl from Soweto, who said she thinks some day she'd like to be president.

"I tell myself I could change something about this world, I could change something, but I don't know how," Buhle told ABC News' Diane Sawyer.

Her whole life, she has been living in a family of 12, trying to survive on $4 a day.

They live in a tiny house. On a recent day, their only meal was grits and bread, divided among all of them.

Buhle also faces daily beatings and bullying from classmates resentful of her academic success.

"I want to tell them that one day they will be proud of me and one day I will be useful to them," she said.

Somehow Buhle has managed to become the very best student in a school of impoverished kids.

"She's going to be a better person for her community, a better person for her society and her family," said her mother, Zanele Zulu. "And make our family happy, a proud family, not only our family, but South Africa with a better qualified, educated women."

When Buhle and Oprah Winfrey met, they shared stories about their lives.

Winfrey said when Buhle saw her dorm room, she jumped on her bed and said, "You don't understand because my whole life I've slept on the floor with my six sisters and now you're telling me I'm going to see my own bed."

Buhle said the only thing she is nervous about is missing her mother.

"I'll miss her and when I'm nervous and eating special foods, nice foods, I'll miss my mom because I'll think about her, 'How is she eating? What is she eating?'" Buhle said.

Zanele said she doesn't want her daughter to worry about her.

"I've told my daughter that she must put herself first, she must please herself first and then she'll think of us after," Zanele said.

Expectations for Buhle are high in a country where 36 percent of black women are unemployed and often illiterate.