The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will cost just over R5 million a month to maintain - but it will never "in the next 100 years be for one day a burden on the government of South Africa".
The R300-million school, for girls from poor backgrounds who show exceptional academic and leadership potential, opened to great fanfare in Henley-on-Klip, Gauteng, on Tuesday.
Academy chief operating officer John Samuel said this week that the queen of talk had committed herself to creating an endowment fund to ensure that the school operates for as long as it can.
"Even if she died tomorrow, we have made sure that the legacy lives on and that the girls will continue to benefit from this vision," said Samuel.
He said the academy was like a little community that needed a range of support services to run effectively, and "we are ensuring that the well-being of the girls, which is a prime consideration, is met".
"We have outsourced the catering, maintenance and security to a private company. This is because we wanted to make sure that the environment was secured for the girls, as we have taken that responsibility from their parents."
Samuel said the staff consisted of 14 female South African teachers who had been chosen from different communities "but I must say the fact that they are all female was not deliberate, it's just how the interviews went".
He said the teachers' salaries were within the South African framework but they had taken the top 50 perfcent of independent schools' salaries and located their remuneration within that band.