Straight faces, please, as we try to look charitably at the toxic row engulfing Prince Harry’s charity. Are you up to speed with this everyday story of giving folk? I’m in such a muddle with it all that I can’t remember if I’m allowed to say that purely from my observations of her telly interviews, Sentebale chair Sophie Chandauka does seem like a right old loose cannon.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s do a quick recap. Sentebale is a charity to help children and young people with HIV and Aids in Lesotho and Botswana, and was set up almost two decades ago by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, in honour of their mothers. Its current chair is Chandauka, a Zimbabwean lawyer, and something about her stewardship of the charity has provoked its entire board of trustees to judge that their relationship has broken down irretrievably. Accordingly, they have all resigned. Chandauka in turn has said that the charity was riddled with “poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny [and] misogynoir”, and accused Prince Harry of “harassment and bullying at scale”.
Oh dear. As I say, she does seem like quite hard work. Poor Prince Harry. It must be difficult having something you’ve served as a custodian of for a long time, only for some publicity-incontinent member of it to go on a full-spectrum media rampage, airing a load of dirty linen, but leaving you feeling like you have to bite your tongue because you can’t really win against the specific types of identity-based accusations they’re making against you. In fact, saying anything at all will probably just make it all worse and ensure it goes on for much longer. At present, Prince Harry has kept a stiff upper lip and declined to complain or explain, but it’s possible that at some point he’s going to have to offer a concisely delphic statement in an attempt to draw a line under the whole business. Impossible to pluck the perfect phrase out of the air, of course, but I’d go with something like “recollections may vary”.
And in case that wasn’t clear, in the interests not of balance, but of accuracy, we do have to state that Prince Harry seems like quite hard work, too. Likewise, his wife.
Meanwhile, it goes without saying that despite its brevity, the above paragraph will serve as the twat-signal to the so-called “Sussex Squad”, a hilarious cavalcade of single-issue human beings who patrol the internet round the clock, policing any and all criticism of the Montecito millionaire couple who ironically need expensive security in part to deal with nutjob fans like them. I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but only vaguely. The Squad also does a lot of other valuable work, like explaining that laughing at Meghan’s ridiculous Netflix lifestyle show is racist.
Anyway, because of all this, I did wonder how they would readjust themselves to the Sentebale blow-up, given that at its heart is a black woman making accusations of bullying and racism. Inevitably – and indeed amusingly – there has been a new bending of reality. Humans, particularly single-issue ones, really are so incredibly resourceful, and I’m hugely enjoying the Sussex Squad’s latest mad conspiracy theory: that Sentabale’s newest trustee, Iain Rawlinson, is someone who, between 10 and 20 years ago, served as chair of Prince William’s conservation charity, and consequently CAN ONLY BE a formal plant by Harry’s brother.
The theory suggests that Rawlinson is deliberately sabotaging Sentebale and the Sussexes on the orders of the Prince of Wales. (Do I have to even run the denial here? To be clear: I imagine both Iain and the Prince of Wales would rubbish these claims.) Still, it’s some more yarn to pin up across the Squad’s investigation wall, which already resembles one of those webs spun by a spider which has ingested considerable quantities of LSD. (Again, in the interests of running comprehensive denials, I imagine the spider would rubbish that claim, and insist it had taken nothing stronger than a fly.)
As for the allegations buzzing around between the Chandauka and Sussex camps, they are becoming more gothically petty by the day, and you’d expect we haven’t heard the last of them yet. They include, but are no means limited to: Harry writes high-handed emails; Sophie has done a predictable publicity stunt; Meghan made Sentabale lose a good price on a venue for a polo game; Meghan spent too much time talking to her friend Serena Williams at the polo game; Sophie wouldn’t publicly defend Meghan after some impenetrable hokey-cokey about where people were standing on a stage when the trophy for the polo game was handed out.
And on it goes. It does seem absolutely mad that there is a charity to help some of the world’s poorest children living with the blight of life-threatening disease, when the true victims in all of this seem to be very senior professional or royal people who simply can’t work with each other without explosive fallouts and worldwide publicity tours. Could there not be a much more worthwhile charity set up to help all these people in positions of power and influence when things go wrong at work, instead of children who – let’s face it – aren’t subject to anything like the same pressures? Call it Sentanexplosiveinterview, and I’m sure the donations would flood right on in.
