A close friend of Prince Harry’s has said in a new interview that some of Sentebale chairwoman Sophie Chandauka’s hostility to the prince is due to her jealously of his wife Meghan Markle, saying that the Zimbabwe-born attorney probably felt overshadowed onstage by the globally famous Duchess of Sussex at a charity fundraiser last April.
“It feels like (Chandauka) had her nose put out of joint because she was not the most important woman of color on the stage,” the friend, Alex Rayner, said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
“There is an undercurrent of stink here because Meghan showed up and it is coming from (Chandauka),” Rayer also said.
Rayner’s remarks about Chandauka’s supposed jealously, or his suggestions that she’s exploiting “racial undertones” in the dispute, have already stirred outrage on social media. To Harry’s critics, his Eton friend has illustrated the embattled chairwoman’s claims that she was the target of misogynoir — prejudice against Black women — within Harry’s African-based HIV and AIDS charity before Harry dramatically resigned last week.
But in speaking to the Daily Mail, with Harry’s permission, Rayner acknowledged one of Chandauka’s points — that King Charles III’s son isn’t as globally beloved as he once was, not after he and Meghan left royal duties, moved to California and began criticizing his royal relatives. Chandauka more scathingly argued that the “toxicity” of Harry and Meghan’s Sussex brand had hurt fundraising.
“Yes, he has gone from being the great hope of the British Royal Family to being seen as a pariah, but he still attracts a lot of exposure,” said Rayner, who has helped with Sentebale events in the past.
Harry has not publicly commented on Chandauka’s charges. But Rayner, who had been in contact with Harry over the weekend, said his friend is “shocked” by the bullying and harassment allegations leveled against him, and “grief-stricken” over the way the saga has unfolded.
“H is very happy for me to speak for him about how he feels about this awful situation,” Rayner said, referring to Harry by his first initial, similar to how Meghan refers to her husband in her Netflix lifestyle show.
“He is just beyond heartbroken and flabbergasted that the charity he founded as a teenager has been taken hostage by the chair,” added Rayner. “It feels tantamount to a hostile takeover.”
The public consumption of this bitter saga began last week when Harry announced that he was leaving the organization that he helped co-found in 2006 to help children in Lesotho, a landlocked African country, affected by poverty, HIV and AIDS. Harry co-founded the organization, with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, on behalf of his mother, the late Princess Diana.
It’s been reported that Harry and other trustees lost “trust and confidence” in Chandauka’s leadership but the attorney and businesswoman has hit back with a range of veiled and direct accusations against the California-based Duke of Sussex. Chandauka, who became chair of the board of trustees in 2023, has presented herself as a “whistleblower” who has tried to expose “abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir” within the “vanity” organization that he co-founded.
In a blistering interview on British TV over the weekend, Chandauka said the “Sussex (PR) machine” was unleashed on her in part because she refused to do reputation damage control on behalf of Meghan. Chandauka also told Sky TV host Trevor Phillips that she has “documentation” to bolster her claims that Harry has been trying to “eject” her from Sentebale “for months” through “bullying and harassment.”
The hostility between Chandauka and Harry has been brewing at least since April, when she helped organize a Sentebele charity polo match in Florida that Harry participated in. Chandauka described how both Harry and his wife created disruptions before and during the match. First, she said, the initial location of the polo match had to be moved because Harry insisted on bringing a camera crew that was filming a documentary for Netflix, with which the couple has a production deal.
Then, on the day of the match, Meghan suddenly announced that she would attend and bring a famous friend, Serena Williams, Chandauka said.
Then, when it came time to award the winning team, Meghan was brought up on stage. But her awkward encounter with Chandauka was caught on video and sparked negative headlines. Meghan appeared to direct Chandauka to move aside so that she could stand next to her husband and be center stage. That required Chandauka to duck under the trophy as she moved to stand next to Meghan.
People on social media interpreted Meghan’s request as “rude” and “disrespectful” to another woman.
“The international press captured this, and there was a lot of talk about the duchess and the choreography on stage and whether she should have been there and her treatment of me,” Chandauka said on Sky TV.
The media attention around Meghan’s treatment of her prompted Harry to ask Chandauka to issue a statement in support of the duchess. Chandauka refused, saying she didn’t want Sentebale to be used “as an extension of of the Sussex PR machine.”
Rayner hit back at Chandauka for letting that kind of negative “narrative” take hold about Meghan. “They could have issued a statement and put a stop to it but they did not. Why?” he asked. “Again, the whole thing smells. It feels planned, and I suspect that the whole thing could only have come from the chair herself.”
Rayner also disputed the idea that Meghan effectively gatecrashed the event. “It’s Harry’s charity polo match and Meghan is his wife, of course she should have expected her there,” he said. As for Harry’s brand hurting fundraising, or a Netflix crew being unwelcome at the polo match, Rayner said: “You cannot say that Harry’s brand is of no consequence to the charity, it simply does not stack up. … And with a TV crew in tow – what sponsor would not want the global exposure?”
Rayner continued: Let’s not get blinded by ‘let’s bash Harry’ and by the idea that there were racial undertones in play. … The situation is that she has failed to administrate her role. She was asked to step down and she refused and took over the charity.”