This week, Prince Harry and Lesotho’s Prince Seesio dramatically resigned from Sentebale, the charity they founded in 2006. I said in my earlier coverage that this whole situation – which is largely unfolding through British reporting – was pinging my conspiracy radar. Basically, Sentebale’s board of trustees were in total disagreement with the chairwoman of the board, Sophie Chandauka, over the future of Sentebale, Sentebale’s mission and Sentebale’s fundraising. The board of trustees asked for Chandauka’s resignation, and she not only refused, she sued them. The board of trustees then resigned en masse, and now Seesio and Harry have resigned as well. Chandauka ran to the Charity Commission in the UK to issue a complaint, and now the British charity authorities (??) are investigating the situation in a Lesotho-based charity. Well, now the Daily Mail’s Rebecca English has written a very odd piece about how obviously, this is all Prince Harry’s fault because he’s no longer a working royal. WTF is happening here?
How sad, then, that all of [Harry’s] hard work has seemingly come to an end just one year short of Sentebale’s 20th anniversary amid a storm of controversy and fears for the charity’s survival. Sad, but not entirely surprising. Although he last visited Lesotho in October 2024, it was actually the first time the prince had actually been there for six years. Even his regular fundraising events for the charity, mostly involving polo, had notably slowed down.
Nor (I, would argue, significantly in the circumstances) had he ever taken his wife, Meghan, to visit. Instead they have focused their efforts since quitting royal duties on high-profile joint tours to Colombia and Nigeria, as well as their lives as professional victims of the Royal Family.
I hesitate to say Harry’s commitment has waned. I think that’s probably unfair given what I know to be his genuine passion for this beautiful but desperately poor mountain kingdom, recently mocked by Donald Trump as a country ‘nobody has ever heard of’ as he slashed its aid budget. But it has long been clear that something wasn’t quite right. And like so many of Harry’s long-standing projects, it does seem that his work in this field has stagnated since leaving the Royal Family, where he would have had a whole team of experienced palace private secretaries and press officers to corral his philanthropic efforts.
It is also worth noting that this is not the first scandal that has engulfed the charity, however well-meaning Harry’s intentions. In 2008 (just two years after Sentebale was founded) it emerged that just £84,000 of the £1.15million raised (through events including a concert in memory of his late mother and a high-profile television documentary on his travels there) had actually been spent on helping the Aids orphans that Harry had set out to save…The ensuing scandal almost brought Sentebale down. A new CEO was subsequently installed and a complete turnaround of the charity’s reputation and fortunes reigned for a significant while (I was again among a small group of media that travelled out there with him two years later to show us how much had changed).
But talk of behind-the-scenes conflict and resignations have never been far away, and have escalated rapidly in recent years with a string of high-profile supporters and executives quitting. This latest, devastating blow comes amid a complex row involving the current Africa-based chair, who is now suing the charity over moves by its trustees (who include a number of Harry’s close friends and supporters) to get her to stand down.
In an excoriating statement, she has hit back, claiming there has been a ‘cover up’ at the charity and accusing it of ‘weak management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, and misogynoir [discrimination against black women]’ against her as a whistleblower.
The irony that Harry will now be pursued at the High Court – his own favored venue for combat in recent years – will be lost on no one. The prince and his fellow co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, the younger brother of the country’s current king and in whose own mother’s memory Senteable was also set up, have now quit in solidarity together describing the situation as ‘unthinkable’ and ‘untenable’, making clear how devastated they are. They have also firmly placed the blame at Ms Chandauka’s feet. Their statement does suggest the situation may not be permanent, but the future is far from assured – not least because Sentebale is now, worryingly, the subject of a Charity Committee investigation in the UK.
It is a desperately sad situation personally given Harry’s good intentions when he first set foot in the country at the age of just 19, longing to atone for his very public sins and prove he was not the superficial playboy many assumed him to be. But it is – and make no mistake about the gravity of this – also a deeply humiliating set-back for the now adult prince who, while his wife clearly gets to work bringing home the financial bacon, has set his own sights on becoming a global humanitarian.
Instead he finds himself an ex-charity patron with a hugely toxic melt-down on his hands, one that threatens to overshadow one of the few genuine success stories of his life and tarnish his dreams of carving out a career as a much-lauded philanthropic crusader.
“And like so many of Harry’s long-standing projects, it does seem that his work in this field has stagnated since leaving the Royal Family, where he would have had a whole team of experienced palace private secretaries and press officers to corral his philanthropic efforts.” And then she mentions the huge scandal that happened when Harry had a whole team of experienced palace private secretaries in 2008. As I said… there’s an agenda at play here, and I find it incredibly fishy that the larger story of “a catastrophic bureaucratic mess at a charity” has instantly become “this is all Harry’s fault, because he’s not a working royal!”
A few other things…the reason why Harry hadn’t traveled to Lesotho in many years was because of the pandemic, remember that? This is very telling too: “Instead they have focused their efforts since quitting royal duties on high-profile joint tours to Colombia and Nigeria, as well as their lives as professional victims of the Royal Family.” Yeah… the Windsors have a hand in something here. I’m not saying they’re behind everything, but the way this story is being handled and reported… something is really “off.” They’ve been doing everything they can to get Harry through Invictus, but they also found some kind of opening with Sentebale.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
