Chérif Keïta presents gifts on behalf of Carleton to principal of Inanda Seminary

Keïta is William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts at Carleton.

23 January 2025 Posted In:
Chérif Keïta presents a microscope to Thembi Ndlovu.
Chérif Keïta and Thembi NdlovuPhoto:
Chérif Keïta presents the graphic novel, A Zulu in New York, to Thembi Ndlovu.

Chérif Keïta, William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts, presented gifts on behalf of Carleton to Thembi Ndlovu, the principal of the historic Inanda Seminary, a girls’ high school near Durban, South Africa. The gifts consisted of a microscope and dozens of copies of A Zulu in New York, the new graphic novel authored by Keïta and Stephanie Cox, senior lecturer in French. The gifts were presented after a community screening of Keïta’s 2014 documentary, uKukhumbula uNokutela/Remembering Nokutela, which was covered in a piece published by Independent Online (IOL), one of South Africa’s leading news websites.

Inanda Seminary was founded by American missionaries in 1869, thus beginning the training of South Africa’s top female leadership; under Nelson Mandela, 20 percent of the women in parliament were graduates of this unique school. In 1881, a young woman from Northfield, Minnesota by the name of Ida Belle Wilcox (née Clary, an Oberlin graduate) taught at the school attended by then-nine-year-old Nokutela Mdima, the forgotten South African heroine whose story is unveiled in Keïta’s film.