Prince Harry Accused of Tactic He Attacked Palace for Using

Prince Harry has been accused of orchestrating a PR attack campaign against the chair of his charity, who said he was “bullying at scale.”

Sophie Chandauka sat down with Sky News days after the Duke of Sussex dramatically quit Sentebale, the charity he set up in Princess Diana’s memory almost 20 years ago to support children with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana, in Southern Africa.

Chandauka, the chair of the charity, described tensions between herself and Meghan Markle at a polo match and said the prince’s last minute decision to bring his Netflix film crew to a 2024 fundraiser lost the organization a venue. Interestingly, she justified her public onslaught against him by saying she was simply responding after he “authorized the release of a damaging piece of news” about her.

The allegations—firmly denied by a source quoted by Sky News—have echoes of the very narrative Prince Harry leveled against his own family and the palace, which he said leaked things to the press about him.

What Sophie Chandauka Said About Prince Harry

Chandauka, who remains Sentebale chair, told interviewer Trevor Phillips: “The only reason I’m here, Trevor, is because 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.

“And can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me, and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organizations and their family. That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.

“So if the world didn’t want to believe that there’s such a thing as bullying, this unleashing of the Sussex machine on me and the 540 employees at Sentebale who received this and have had to defend it know this is the truth.”

She said the “Sussex machine” was “the PR machine that supports Prince Harry’s efforts” and added that “the only way we discovered of his decision [to resign] was through the Sussex machine activating newspapers.”

And her criticisms were not confined to the events since Prince Harry resigned from Sentebale last week.

Chandauka said she was asked to speak out after social media reaction to an awkward moment with Meghan that was caught on camera at a polo match held to raise money for the charity.

The royal couple were posing on stage with the winner’s trophy when Chandauka joined them partway through the shoot and stood next to Harry.

Meghan then appeared to invite Chandauka to move next to her instead, saying “do you want to come over here” several times as the charity chair did not initially move.

The moment sparked negative headlines, including from the New York Post: “Meghan Markle awkwardly demands woman not pose next to husband Prince Harry at polo event.”

Chandauka told Sky News: “The choreography went badly on stage because we had too many people on stage.

“The international press captured this and there was a lot of talk about the duchess and the choreography on stage and whether she should have been there and her treatment of me.

“Prince Harry asked me to issue some sort of a statement in support of the duchess and I said I wouldn’t, not because I didn’t care about the duchess, but because I knew what would happen if I did.”

Chandauka said if she had broken her silence then Meghan would “get even worse trolling.”

She also said a last minute decision to invite Netflix to film the event lost them their original venue, which put up its prices once it deemed it to be a commercial booking.

What Prince Harry Said About the Royal Attack Campaign

A little more than two years earlier it was Prince Harry who was asked by Anderson Cooper about his own decision to go public with dramatic allegations against his family in Spare, his memoir.

“Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife,” he told 60 Minutes in January 2023.

“You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold.”

He said that there were “endless” leaks by the palace and added: “So now, trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids.”

Meanwhile in his book Spare he said Queen Camilla “had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.”

And when allegations that Meghan bullied palace staff appeared in U.K. broadsheet The Times, in 2021, Harry told his mental health documentary The Me You Can’t See: “Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of [the media’s] headlines, and that combined effort of the firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying in her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much.

“That’s heartbreaking. I held her, we talked, she cried, and she cried, and she cried.”

What Prince Harry Said About Sophie Chandauka

Prince Harry and Sentebale co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho effectively broke news of the crisis by issuing a joint statement to the media, including Newsweek: “It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation.

“These trustees acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down, while keeping the wellbeing of staff in mind. In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship.

“We thank all the trustees for their service over the years and are truly heartbroken they’ve had to follow through with this act. What’s transpired is unthinkable.”

Comparisons

Chandauka appears to be operating based on the same logic that carried Harry and Meghan to their sit down interview with Oprah Winfrey—that public criticism justifies a strong public response, even if that means airing dirty laundry.

And it was Harry who took the Sentebale crisis public first, though Chandauka had already filed a lawsuit at the High Court in London by the time he released his statement.

It may be hard for Harry to morally denounce her decision to give her sit-down interview without sounding hypocritical in relation to his own bombshell interviews about the monarchy.

As Chandauka told Phillips: “I just want to say, normally I wouldn’t want to discuss family business in this way in an open forum but here we are and I’ll do my best to be frank in my disclosure.”

After all, allegations of bullying, harassment, misogyny and racism are not only serious in and of themselves, but are also not a million miles from Meghan’s own accusations about the monarchy.

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales, told Newsweek: “We can confirm that we are aware of concerns about the governance of Sentebale. We are assessing the issues to determine the appropriate regulatory steps.”

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook page.

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