Sophie Chandauka is still briefing to the British media. She gave several interviews over the weekend, and she’s using the Sentebale name to issue bizarre, self-serving statements on her behalf as well. But she’s also behind the stories popping up in the Times and Telegraph in recent weeks, including yesterday’s story about an email sent to her by Prince Harry in which Harry reportedly requested that Chandauka make a statement or do some kind of damage control after the British media made a mountain out of a molehill with Meghan asking Chandauka to shift over during the polo photos. There are several moving parts – Chandauka is clearly using royalist talking points, but she also seems to have an obvious jealousy towards Meghan in particular. The more Chandauka speaks, the less sense she makes and the more her story falls apart. In any case, the Times of London now reports on a bizarre situation in which someone made a “Rhodesia” reference about her chairmanship of Sentebale.
The Duke of Sussex wrote to the chair of his charity in November after she raised complaints of “bullying” and “racism” following a claim that a white trustee likened her leadership to the white minority rule of 1960s Rhodesia.
Sophie Chandauka, the Zimbabwe-born lawyer who became chair of Sentebale in July 2023, claims that she was denied a one-on-one meeting with Prince Harry in which she hoped to discuss the dynamics of the board.
In November, she made a complaint in writing to an independent trustee in which she described herself as a “whistleblower” and raised concerns of “public and private” examples of “bullying”, “racism” and “misogyny”.
The Times understands that one white trustee compared Chandauka’s leadership to “UDI”, a reference to the 1965 unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Led by the prime minister Ian Smith, white minority leaders illegally declared independence from Britain to crush black opposition. The comment referencing her country’s colonial past is said to have incensed Chandauka as one of several examples of behaviour at the charity.
Chandauka emailed some of her concerns to a trustee in November last year and then wrote to Harry separately. She is understood to have said she would be open to an “independent investigation” into her concerns at the charity. Chandauka claims to have asked the Duke of Sussex for a one-on-one meeting in which she planned to air her grievances but it is understood that the request was denied.
When Chandauka became aware that trustees wanted to eject her, she launched legal proceedings in the High Court to stop it. On March 5, she lodged an application for a stay, which paused board meetings for six weeks, preventing her from being removed. Since Harry’s departure from the charity he founded nearly 20 years ago, Chandauka has been a vocal critic of the prince and other departing trustees.
I’m really struggling to follow what was said and by whom and why it was offensive. I think this is what happened: a white trustee said something comparing Chandauka’s leadership to UDI. The comparison was that Chandauka acted like a white colonialist oppressor of Africans. Which… yes, it’s offensive, but it also shows that in the second half of 2024, there were loud concerns within the board of trustees about Chandauka’s “dictatorial” leadership style. That’s what Baroness Chalker of Wallasey said publicly too, and she cited Chandauka’s “dictatorial” style as the reason why she resigned as a Sentebale trustee.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Sky News screengrabs.
