Rarely have three people deserved each other more than Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Sophie Chandauka, the director of Harry’s charity, Sentebale. The dispute currently engulfing Sentebale continues to throw up claims and accusations, with the Charity Commission now stepping in to investigate. But all that is really clear is that this bunch of privileged people have been far too busy weaponising their own victimhood to spare a thought for the impoverished young people in southern Africa that Sentebale is supposed to help.
Founded to support vulnerable children or those suffering with AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana, Sentebale has recently been consumed by infighting between Chandauka and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. At an award ceremony last year, Meghan and Chandauka squabbled over who should stand next to the ginger prince. Footage from the event shows a rictus-grinned Meghan, hands perma-locked on to Harry, directing Chandauka to the sidelines.
Unsurprisingly, this awkward clip went viral. With Meghan coming under fire for being bossy and hogging the limelight, Harry apparently asked Chandauka to speak publicly about the incident – presumably, in the hopes that she would reassure the world she was delighted to play second fiddle to the duchess. But she refused. ‘I said no, we’re not setting a precedent by which we become an extension of the Sussex PR machine’, Chandauka has since told the Financial Times. Good for her. But this was not the end of the dispute between the pair.
This year, amid claims that Chandauka’s leadership had become ‘untenable’ as a result of falling donations and large sums of money apparently being spent on consultants, Sentebale’s trustees asked her to step down. But Chandauka is no novice. She is an Oxford-educated lawyer, whose wealthy Zimbabwean family was the third-largest donor to Sentebale. Before heading up Harry’s charity, she held senior corporate positions at Meta and Morgan Stanley. Whatever the trustees intended, she was never likely to have gone quietly. Having refused to resign, Chandauka launched legal proceedings against the charity in the UK’s High Court. Harry, along with Sentebale co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and all the charity’s trustees, resigned. From here, things began to get really messy.
Chandauka has used her legal case to present herself as a ‘whistleblower’. In an official complaint sent to the Charity Commission, she claims to have exposed ‘poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny [and] misogynoir’ – the latter meaning discrimination specifically against black women. She also says Sentebale was a ‘vanity project’ for Harry, Seeiso and the trustees and accuses the duke, in particular, of ‘harassment and bullying at scale’. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Harry. But let’s not forget we’ve been here before. It was not that long ago that Harry and Meghan were the ones throwing their own accusations of racism and bullying against the royal family. Through their 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, interminable 2022 Netflix series and Harry’s 2023 biography, Spare, we’ve had to put up with years of their privileged tales of ‘hardship’ and ‘abuse’. Whereas Queen Elizabeth II could only declare that ‘recollections may vary’ in reference to the Sussexes’ accusations, a ‘source’ apparently ‘close to’ Sentebale’s trustees is reported to have said that Chandauka only alleged racism when on the defensive: ‘She’s definitely playing the race card and openly.’ Quite the accusation.
What to make of all this? Is it Harry who is the bully? Or the other way round? No one except those involved know for sure. But one thing seems to be clear: that among today’s wealthy progressives, victimhood is the weapon of choice. We frequently see allegations of racism, misogyny, bullying and even ‘misogynoir’ made among unimaginably powerful and wealthy people. It’s an absurd spectacle to watch playing out.
Let’s not forget Meghan in all of this, either. As Harry and Chandauka slog it out in the press, she is busy peddling her posh jam, honey and ‘flower sprinkles’. If the jam, or rather ‘raspberry spread’, seems a tad pricey, Meghan Antoinette reassures us we can reuse the ‘keepsake packaging’ to hold ‘love notes or special treasures’. Never mind a jam jar, a sick bucket might be more useful.
Whoever wins in this elite battle, it is the children of southern Africa who lose out. Harry, Meghan and Chandauka absolutely deserve each other. I just wish they would spare the rest of us.
Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.
