Please excuse my attempts to keep up with all of the reporting on this unfolding Sentebale scandal. Sentebale cofounders Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso joined their board of trustees in resigning en masse, in protest of chairwoman Sophie Chandauka. Chandauka refused to resign from her position and she’s trying to sue her way into staying at the charity. Harry’s side went to People Magazine yesterday to describe what led to the board’s request for Chandauka’s resignation: she blew $600K on outside consultants (without telling the board) and she lost a major sponsor for Sentebale’s annual polo match. Chandauka’s statements this week have definitely been royalist/deranger dog-whistles, so much so that this situation has felt like another high-level, Windsor-led operation to harm Harry in any way possible. The British media’s coverage of the situation has emphasized that to me, from Becky English’s “this never would have happened if Harry was a working royal” BS, to the Mail dusting off Richard Kay to write some sleazy commentary about Harry and racism. An excerpt from Kay’s latest:
The Sentebale mess exposed virtue-signaling Harry! But even more extraordinary than the disarray over his actions – and the shedding of what was among the very last vestiges of his former royal life – was the eruption of an unsavoury war of words which may expose a deeper hypocrisy that the virtue-signalling Harry will find even more unpalatable. In her excoriating statement, the charity’s board chairman, Zimbabwe-born lawyer Dr Sophie Chandauka, whom the trustees wanted to stand down, did not mince her words. She blasted ‘weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny and misogynoir’. This last assertion, discrimination against black women, the most damaging of all.
For a prince who with his wife triggered a crisis in the House of Windsor, overshadowing the last days of both Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth with their claims of ‘bullying behaviour’ behind palace walls and of the existence of a ‘royal racist’ speculating about the colour of the skin of their then unborn first child, Archie, her remarks are a terrible irony. For Harry, who has spoken of his ‘awakening’ to race issues and his appreciation of unconscious racial bias that he has learned through his wife, such criticism is nothing short of catastrophic.
And in the absence of a smoking gun about what may be behind this extraordinary state of affairs at the charity, the accusations – along with Dr Chandauka’s claim that the prince was ‘playing the victim card’ by quitting as patron – is as bad as it gets. Even in faraway Montecito the impact of her mockery will be impossible to escape. In one devastating passage she took a swipe – without naming names – at those ‘in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people’. Who but Harry could she have had in mind as she said of such people that they ‘play the victim card and use the very Press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct?’
How richly piquant that ‘playing the victim card’, all too familiar to anyone who has read Spare or watched the Netflix Harry & Meghan series, should now be applied to the prince.
Now, with his abrupt resignation, Harry is at a crossroads. It is certainly a desperately sad moment for the prince. Sentebale together with the Invictus Games (an international sporting event for wounded service personnel and veterans) were his two pet projects, the last remaining links with his pre-Meghan life and part of what he self-righteously labelled his ‘life of service’. And in his devotion to both he accumulated considerable public affection for the prince he used to be. But without Sentebale – and in his statement he did allow for a possible future return to the charity one day – his diary is looking ominously empty.
By contrast, his wife’s in-tray seems to be positively overflowing. From her With Love, Meghan Netflix show (a second series is scheduled for later in the year), to her new podcast in which she is in discussion with female entrepreneurs, and an online shopping venture featuring her wardrobe staples, the Duchess of Sussex has never been busier. It is hard to escape the view of Harry’s old circle in Britain, who believe that Meghan would prefer her husband to be channelling his efforts towards newer interests in the US. This may be uncharitable because apart from his work as ‘chief impact officer’ of mental health coaching company Better Up, there’s not much on his agenda.
It’s almost as if Chandauka chose her words specifically to incite this kind of response from the British media and the Windsors. Oh, a Black woman is accusing Harry of misogynoir, oh, she’s accusing him of playing the victim card, how the worm turns, Harry! They’ve been trying for years to find some way to delegitimize Harry and Meghan and the very real racism Meghan faced. This is like Christmas for Kay, English and the deranger community.
Also: the whole thing about “Harry has nothing on his plate” is so utterly bizarre – he was in New York last year for like a dozen different events (including meetings at the UN). He and Meghan are both booked and busy. It’s the heir to the throne who has so much free time, he spends hours on football forums.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
