The chairwoman of a charity co-founded by Prince Harry has accused him of “harassment and bullying at scale” in a TV interview Sunday, after he and others involved with the charity quit this week.
Sophie Chandauka, the chairwoman of Sentebale, said the Duke of Sussex unleashed “the Sussex (PR) machine” on her earlier this week when he publicly quit as a patron of the charity, along with co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, and the board of trustees.
“At some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorized the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director,” she said on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips program.
“And can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organizations and their family?” she added. “That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”
According to a source close to the charity’s trustees and patrons, they “fully expected this publicity stunt and reached their collective decision (to quit) with this in mind.”
The source also countered Chandauka’s claim that the press had been informed about the departures before the charity, saying both Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso had sent a resignation letter to the chairwoman and trustees on March 10.
In another interview, published Saturday, Chandauka said Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso “want to force a failure and then come to the rescue” of the organization.
While the specifics of the row are not clear, Chandauka told the Financial Times there had been friction between the charity’s UK-based staff and those in Lesotho and Botswana.
This, she said, was triggered by her efforts to transform the charity and shift decision-making to leaders in southern Africa.
Prince Harry said he was “in shock” after deciding to quit the charity, which he set up in 2006 to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana. The Duke of Sussex co-founded Sentebale in honor of his mother, Princess Diana, nine years after she was killed in a Paris car crash.
In a joint statement with his co-founder, Prince Harry said Wednesday that it was “with heavy hearts” that they had resigned from their roles “until further notice.”
In her own statement earlier this week, Chandauka appeared to take a swipe at the 40-year-old royal for “playing the victim card.”
“Everything I do at Sentebale is in pursuit of the integrity of the organisation, its mission and the young people we serve,” she said in the statement reported by Britain’s PA Media news agency.
She went on to describe the situation as “the story of a woman who dared to blow the whistle about issues of poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir – and the coverup that ensued.”