Why Prince Harry Resigned From His African Charity

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Prince Harry’s surprising resignation from an African charity he co-founded in memory of his mother, Princess Diana, came this week amid allegations of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism made by the organization’s chairperson against unnamed board members.

Harry announced his resignation in a joint statement with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, who he co-founded the Sentebale youth-focused charity with in 2006. The princes were patrons of Sentebale and weren’t on the board of trustees.

They said they were quitting in support of the trustees, who left after a dispute with chairperson Sophie Chandauka.

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Sentebale works in the southern African nations of Lesotho and Botswana and was started to help young people affected by AIDS after Harry spent part of a gap year in 2004 working at an orphanage in Lesotho for children whose parents died of the disease.

Sentebale means “don’t forget me” in the Sesotho language, and Harry and Seeiso set it up in memory of their mothers.

Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Seeiso’s mother, the former queen of Lesotho, died in 2003.

What Harry has said

In their statement, Harry and Seeiso said they were in shock at the developments at the charity, where the trustees had asked Chandauka to step down. She refused and filed papers at a British court to prevent her from being removed.

The princes said the trustees were acting in the best interests of Sentebale and had now resigned, and the breakdown in relationships was “devastating.”

“What’s transpired is unthinkable,” the princes said.

Allegations of sexism and racism

Chandauka, a Zimbabwean corporate lawyer, said in her own statement that she had “dared to blow the whistle” about poor governance, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, sexism and racism at the charity, and said there had been a cover-up. Her allegations appeared to be directed at the trustees, but she didn’t name anyone or give any details.

The trustees who resigned included Mark Dyer, a longtime mentor of Harry’s. One of the other trustees, Kelello Lerotholi, told British television channel Sky News that Chandauka’s allegations were surprising and “there was never even a hint” of misconduct by trustees.

Chandauka said that she had reported some of the board members to the U.K.’s Charity Commission, where Sentebale is registered. A spokesperson at Sentebale didn’t respond to a request for more information on who Chandauka’s allegations were specifically directed at or what they involved.

What does Sentebale do?

Sentebale has a special place for Harry and continued some of the work Princess Diana did by supporting AIDS charities and trying to remove stigmas around the disease. Diana visited South Africa to promote AIDS awareness in March 1997, five months before she died.

Sentebale was initially set up to help vulnerable children and young people affected by AIDS with health care services, education and vocational training. Lesotho, a poor mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, is one of the worst-affected countries in the world by HIV.

Harry’s charity had recently evolved to also address issues of youth health, wealth and climate resilience in southern Africa under Chandauka, and the future direction of the charity was a point of disagreement among its leadership, according to British media reports.

Harry visited Sentebale in Lesotho as recently as October, when he spent an evening around a campfire speaking with young people and said the charity was building a force of young advocates. On the same trip, Lesotho Prime Minister Sam Matekane said the country would always be Harry’s “second home.”