The Sentebale row: a blow for Prince Harry
Prince Harry was just 20 when he visited Lesotho during his gap year, said Tessa Dunlop in The Independent. His adolescence had been turbulent and self-destructive, but in the tiny landlocked country he found "meaning" and purpose. Two years later, he and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho founded Sentebale – a charity dedicated to orphans of the Aids epidemic – in memory of their late mothers.
The cause was clearly very close to Harry's heart, and he raised millions for it; so "no one was surprised" when Sentebale (which translates as "forget me not", his mother's favourite flower) remained in the Sussexes' portfolio after they left the UK. Last week, however, Harry revealed that he had made the "devastating" decision to stand down as its patron, in solidarity with its trustees. Mainly members of his "establishment old guard", they had resigned following a power struggle with its new chair, Sophie Chandauka, a Zimbabwean lawyer and former trustee.
In the war of words this triggered, few facts are agreed, said Roya Nikkhah in The Sunday Times. The trustees have briefed that Chandauka had wasted vast sums on consultancy fees, in a failed effort to attract US donors. She denies this, and counter-claims that the charity had been damaged by the "toxicity of its lead patron's brand" – arguing that Harry's fall out with his family had deterred commercial partners. She says the trustees refused to discuss this, and accuses them of weak management, bullying, "misogyny and misogynoir".
She also implies that Harry had used the charity to enhance the Sussex brand. She claims that he forced a fundraising polo match to be moved, so that he could bring a Netflix camera crew; and that he'd ordered her to issue a public defence of his wife Meghan, who had turned up at the event unexpectedly, and been criticised for seeming to "manage" Chandauka out of a photocall with Harry. Now, she says the duke is playing the "victim card", while "unleashing the Sussex machine" against her.
Chandauka aimed her attacks well, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail. She has turned Harry's victim status against him, and undermined his claim to be "awake" to injustice. And she has a point about the charity's funding: these days, it doesn't look good for a charity serving Africa's poor to be mainly funded by white men playing polo. Still, you have to feel for Harry. Sentebale was his passion project and, without it, his in-tray will look even emptier, while his wife's is "overflowing". Whoever is to blame, this dispute is surely "a crushing blow" for the prince.