RICHARD KAY: For Harry, who’s spoken of his ‘awakening’ to race issues since falling for Meghan, the allegations by the boss of his beloved African charity are nothing short of catastrophic

Long ago, before he dreamed up the name Spare for his score-settling and embittered memoir, before he allowed claims of racism to reverberate around the heads of an outraged and offended Royal Family, and before even Meghan Markle was a glint in his eye, the centre of Prince Harry‘s universe revolved around a charity he named Sentebale.

To set it up and pay the bills, he threw himself into fundraising, from glossy polo-playing tournaments to a distinctly unglamorous and gruelling 1,000-mile charity motorcycle ride he undertook across the dustbowl of southern Africa. And in his wake the money came rolling in, with sponsors queuing up with open cheque books, eager to be up-close with this most charismatic of royals.

It brought purpose and meaning to his at times chaotic life. And it was therapeutic to a young man still haunted by the death of his mother when he was only 12.

After the nightclubs, bars and brawls, this was Harry’s coming-of-age moment. Its ambition to help children who had lost their parents to Aids and HIV in land-locked Lesotho and nearby Botswana was not just a nod to Princess Diana‘s most famous crusade. She was, he said, its inspiration.

So too was its name, ‘forget-me-not’, in Sesotho, the local language of Lesotho, where he first established the charity with the kingdom’s Ampleforth-educated Prince Seeiso – like Harry, a monarch’s second son.

This was Prince Harry dedicating himself to his mother’s memory. And in those early, heady days in 2006 he declared it a mission without end. ‘I’m committed for the rest of my life,’ he vowed.

How hollow those words sound today almost 20 years later with his resignation from Sentebale along with his royal co-founder and its entire board of trustees amid what he described as ‘unthinkable’ infighting.

The row apparently stemmed from a decision to move the charity’s fundraising operation from London to southern Africa, prompting resignations. Harry and Seeiso sided with the trustees.

Harry smiling with guests at a Sentebale charity reception in Johannesburg, South Africa

Harry holds hands with Meghan during a polo match fundraiser for Sentebale in 2024

Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and Prince Harry together in October 2024

But even more extraordinary than the disarray over his actions – and the shedding of what was among the very last vestiges of his former royal life – was the eruption of an unsavoury war of words which may expose a deeper hypocrisy that the virtue-signalling Harry will find even more unpalatable.

In her excoriating statement, the charity’s board chairman, Zimbabwe-born lawyer Dr Sophie Chandauka, whom the trustees wanted to stand down, did not mince her words.

She blasted ‘weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny and misogynoir’. This last assertion, discrimination against black women, the most damaging of all.

For a prince who with his wife triggered a crisis in the House of Windsor, overshadowing the last days of both Prince Philip

and Queen Elizabeth with their claims of ‘bullying behaviour’ behind palace walls and of the existence of a ‘royal racist’ speculating about the colour of the skin of their then unborn first child, Archie, her remarks are a terrible irony.

For Harry, who has spoken of his ‘awakening’ to race issues and his appreciation of unconscious racial bias that he has learned through his wife, such criticism is nothing short of catastrophic.

And in the absence of a smoking gun about what may be behind this extraordinary state of affairs at the charity, the accusations – along with Dr Chandauka’s claim that the prince was ‘playing the victim card’ by quitting as patron – is as bad as it gets. Even in faraway Montecito the impact of her mockery will be impossible to escape. In one devastating passage she took a swipe – without naming names – at those ‘in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people’.

Who but Harry could she have had in mind as she said of such people that they ‘play the victim card and use the very Press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct?’

How richly piquant that ‘playing the victim card’, all too familiar to anyone who has read Spare or watched the Netflix Harry & Meghan series, should now be applied to the prince.

Prince Harry flanked by Sister Victoria Mota and Prince Seeiso, interacts with pupils at a school in Lesotho during a visit in 2013

Harry farming in Lesotho in 2006, the year he co-founded Sentebale

So what on earth has gone wrong – and how could it have come to this?

When, five years ago, Harry and Meghan ran out of royal road having failed to achieve their wish of a half-in, half-out semi-official life, he made one final speech on UK soil. In it, he talked about the couple’s ‘leap of faith’ and thanked his listeners for giving him ‘the courage to take this next step’.

His audience? Workers, donors and friends of Sentebale. ‘My work and commitment for this charity… will never falter,’ he promised. Oh dear.

But it is worth recalling some of his other words that night at The Ivy Chelsea Garden in London, in a speech brimming with emotion. He spoke of honouring his mother’s legacy and the welcome the charity had given him ‘when I lost my mum’. And while the love and happiness he had found with Meghan was central to his remarks, one thing was missing: he had nothing to say about taking his wife to tiny Lesotho where it had all begun.

Sentebale, don’t forget, had been part of Harry’s world for almost his entire adult life. He was on his gap year between leaving Eton and joining the Army when, aged 19, he first visited the mountainous kingdom. The experience was to draw him back and he established the charity there two years later.

In Prince Seeiso, who had also lost his mother, he had a like-minded co-founder. Remembering their mothers was key to what they did over the succeeding two decades.

Along the way Seeiso became a friend and, together with his wife, they were the only foreign royals invited to Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle.

Yet curiously, despite Africa playing such a large part in his and Meghan’s story – they famously went on safari to Botswana after only two dates – he has never taken her to Lesotho. Harry, meanwhile, continued to visit Lesotho and raised considerable sums to support the work of the charity. But in the years since Megxit, those visits have reduced – a trip last October was his first since 2018 – though he has continued to prioritise fundraising. He donated £1.2 million of the profits from Spare to the cause.

Despite Africa playing such a large part in his and Meghan’s story – they famously went on safari to Botswana after only two dates – he has never taken her to Lesotho

Harry and Seeiso visit a special Sentebale event aimed at providing work opportunities for young women in Lesotho

Despite his high-profile patronage, things did not always run smoothly – even if they appeared to. In 2008 – only two years after the charity was set up – it emerged that just £84,000 of the £1 million-plus raised through events, including the Wembley concert in memory of his late mother, had been spent on actually helping Aids orphans, Harry’s stated aim.

At the same time, £250,000 had been lavished on staffing costs, plus thousands more on new offices and a fleet of 4×4 vehicles. It was also revealed that its £100,000-a-year director enjoyed perks that included a four-bedroom villa with staff and an allowance for the overseas education of his children. The ensuing scandal almost brought Sentebale down. A new chief executive was installed and the charity overhauled. But behind-the-scenes conflict and resignations have never been far away.

Two years ago, advertising guru Johnny Hornby stood down after 11 years as a trustee, five of which he spent as chairman.

His departure was followed last November by that of Baroness Chalker, the former Conservative overseas development minister, who had been a trustee for 18 years and who was invited by Harry to join the board because of her friendship with his late mother. Another figure close to Harry, Andrew Tucker, also stepped down from his senior position at Sentebale after almost a decade the same month.

Then, a month later, chief executive Richard Miller quit having served for five years.

Now, with his abrupt resignation, Harry is at a crossroads. It is certainly a desperately sad moment for the prince. Sentebale together with the Invictus Games (an international sporting event for wounded service personnel and veterans) were his two pet projects, the last remaining links with his pre-Meghan life and part of what he self-righteously labelled his ‘life of service’. And in his devotion to both he accumulated considerable public affection for the prince he used to be.

But without Sentebale – and in his statement he did allow for a possible future return to the charity one day – his diary is looking ominously empty.

By contrast, his wife’s in-tray seems to be positively overflowing. From her With Love, Meghan Netflix show (a second series is scheduled for later in the year), to her new podcast in which she is in discussion with female entrepreneurs, and an online shopping venture featuring her wardrobe staples, the Duchess of Sussex has never been busier.

It is hard to escape the view of Harry’s old circle in Britain, who believe that Meghan would prefer her husband to be channelling

his efforts towards newer interests in the US. This may be uncharitable because apart from his work as ‘chief impact officer’ of mental health coaching company Better Up, there’s not much on his agenda.

Insiders, however, remember a fundraising crisis six years ago when carmakers Audi ended sponsorship to a royal polo event – which benefited Sentebale –amid claims that it had been asked to dramatically increase its donation. At the time Kensington Palace denied suggestions that Meghan had inspired the increase.

Meanwhile, courtiers who fondly remember the enthusiasm with which Harry threw himself into Sentebale, suggest that the crisis is an example of the absence of royal oversight. ‘Organisations need nurturing and it’s clear that moving Sentebale’s centre of gravity from London to Africa has upset that dynamic.’

The full facts of Dr Chandauka’s dispute with Sentebale are yet to emerge, but for an increasingly idle Prince Harry, however, it is nothing short of a crushing blow.

Additional reporting: Charlotte Griffiths