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.
- The Duchess of Sussex presents the trophy to her husband, the Duke of Sussex after his team the Royal Salute Sentebale Team defeated the Grand Champions Team, in the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, to benefit Sentebale, at The USPA National Polo Center Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke Of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess Of Sussex Where: Wellington, Florida, United States When: 12 Apr 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
- The Duchess of Sussex the Duke of Sussex poses for pictures with the teams after he took part in the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, to benefit Sentebale, at The USPA National Polo Center Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke Of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess Of Sussex Where: Wellington, Florida, United States When: 12 Apr 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
- The Duke of Sussex during the awards ceremony after he played in a polo match during the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, to benefit Sentebale, at The USPA National Polo Center Featuring: Prince Harry, Duke Of Sussex Where: Wellington, Florida, United States When: 12 Apr 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Why would she request a one-on-one meeting with Harry? Why not a meeting with Harry AND Seeiso or a general meeting with both and all the trustees? Nobody should meet one-on-one with her without anyone around as witness. And, if she felt Harry was so “toxic” why would she trust him in a one-on-one meeting? She makes less and less sense the more she rattles on. Harry and Seeiso won’t have to defend themselves; she will bury herself.
I’m asking myself the same thing. So much about this makes no sense.
Exactly, Harry was toxic and she didn’t like workign with the Sussex PR machine and everything else she’s been saying….but she wanted a one-on-one meeting with him in November to discuss something someone ELSE said to her??
it sounds like the wheels were already coming off at that point and she knew it and Harry knew it.
Likely Harry said “I’m not going to meet with this woman without witnesses present”.
Witnesses and a security detail. The woman is not well.
Honestly H should reclaim his time, preserve his peace, and continue to grey rock this hot mess of a human being. She didn’t get the tabloid fight she wanted, so like a typical narcissist, she’s escalating because she’s not getting attention from her target.
Let her talk to a wall.
The fact that she’s completely ignoring Prince Seeiso throughout this entire story just shows us that she is being paid by the Windsors and their media friends.
It is obvious that she is circling Harry like a female dog in heat, and since she does not get what she wants, she attacks furiously. Such a meeting would be for her and KP with their media, an endless source of invented “facts” and new attacks based on them, and the accusation of molestation would be the first of them. She is as furious as if they promised her Harry for this Trojan horse, and she cannot collect the prize.😄
She seems to stand inappropriately close to him as many others have pointed out. I’m sure both H&M spotted this some time back, and realised that a one-on-one meeting would be very dangerous. If she had planned a seduction, and Harry no doubt would have rebuffed her, you better believe that she would have gone postal.
The more she talks the less this makes her look good. She is spewing shit and some of the things she says are right out of the leftovers playbook. They try to make it sound like she was bullied when it was she a non paid volunteer who was doing the bullying. If some did call her a colonizer maybe they did that because of who she was really working for the colonizing leftovers.
Rawlinson is her puppet master.
I’m not sure, please take this with a kilo of salt, as whatever this woman says is making me really question her. But if anyone ever said that to her, I believe they saw earlier on that she was trying to take the charity over and they sort of were trying to link her to the Zimbabwe land redistribution of the 80s where white Zimbabweans got their land taken away and given or taken over to/by African Zimbabweans. Please take this with 2 kilos of salt.
The land redistribution happened after Zimbabwe became Zimbabwe, first under Mnangagwa and then again under Mugabe in 2000s. Nothing to do with Rhodesia or Ian Smith.
The Ian Smith reference likely stems from the fact that he (and his white government) unilaterally declared Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) independent from the UK in response to the UK making majority rule a condition of independence.
That’s the point I suspect the board member was making. Sophie continually acted unilaterally instead of working within the “majority rule” of the governing board.
I suspect that this board member was an older white person who thought they were making a deep point in a way Sophie, who is from Zimbabwe, would understand. Given everything we have learned about her, however, it was an incredibly stupid way to do it because the comparison could be easily twisted into something it was not meant to be.
It probably won’t happen but I’d love to see all these board members appear or at least have their witness statements published as part of the CC investigation. I agree re Sophie’s ignorance and stupidity to understand the reference.
I was waiting for the Zimbabwe links… 😏
When a Chair has lost the confidence of his/her board, s/he normally resigns. So why she clung on shows a particular attitude that rules don’t apply to her. I suspect Rawlinson has walked her through this because let’s face it, Chuck and Willie always get their own way.
I can definitely see how someone could take offense to being compared to an abhorrent individual, and being sensitive they probably could have used a different example. That said it doesn’t discount the point they were making that she was behaving in a authoritarian manner in her approach. You don’t get to skate on being called out on your bad behavior because you don’t like who they compared you to.
Also, I really hate to play into the Jezebel trope, even when it’s against women that I am side eyeing but why is she always trying to get Harry on his own? It could be the British media framing to be fair and they could be leaving out that she asked for joint meetings with both patrons but it doesn’t seem like it.
Beyond her story being contradictory and missing connections that others find, all roads seem to lead back to being in Harry’s presence, being photographed with him alone, and other isolationist tactics. It’s weird.
I’m glad Harry didn’t meet her one-on-one. He must have realised he had a stalker in chairing Sentebale.
Can you imagine the allegations she could have made up with a meeting just between them two?
She’s always clinging to Harry in photos, or has her arm around his back. She’s too touchy Feely. She’s probably mad he chose Meghan and not her. She’s definitely a turncoat!
Having worked in HR for many years, you never EVER meet with someone one-on-one about a performance issue. Detailed minutes of any meeting must be taken by a second person who will corroborate what was discussed. So in her cunning little mind (or acting on Rawlinson’s instructions) she attempted to force a one-on-one with Harry so she could then turn around and spew a bunch of nonsense about how he tried to bully her during the meeting. Fortunately Harry has a long history of dealing with underhanded tricks like this and saw it coming from a mile away. She really is screwing herself into the ground on this one. Unfortunately it’s the children who are going to suffer now that she’s effectively ground Sentebale’s operations to a halt.
Girl Why are you fighting so hard for something that is not yours?
BECAUSE HE’S MINE! 😂
👍👏
This only shows that she and the board were having issues for months. She met with Harry in December, did she raise issue then?
Exactly. She was hired in July 2023 and since then there has been a shocking number of senior people who left Sentebale after she arrived. She seems to have been a prickly troublemaker from the moment she joined Sentebale.
If that comment happened, I’d be pissed too. I vaguely remember what I was watching, but it was supposed to be current day and a Brit called us (America) “The Colonies.” That shit had me livid and that Brit was talking about white Americans. I can’t imagine hearing something similar to the ppl who were actually colonized.
That being said, there’s videos of Sophie and Harry hanging out in December at the art gallery in NYC. Why couldn’t she talk to him then?
I’d be pissed, too. Any comparison to Ian Smith or Mugabe is inappropriate.
Separate from that, Sophie seems like she has no idea how to run a NGO:
1. The Chair on!y has the authority described in bylaws or delegated by the Board. I’m very curious what the bylaws and Board meeting minutes say.
2. Diversifying the donor base is smart because it manages funding risk. But not at the expense of your largest donor/fundraiser (Harry) and not by throwing 600k at consultants and getting nothing for it.
At least they’re not calling her ‘dr’ any more.
Well, it certainly seems that Sophie never had intentions of helping the children. I hope she works on her issues and stays away from charitable institutions. It’s ridiculous how many people use charities for personal gain.
1. One of best decision Harry made was to decline meeting one-on- one. If he had, she can take anything said in such meeting and usednit against him. With just two of them present.
2. Name calling is immature. Make a point without it. Because now she has something to run with.
3. Just from the little we have witnessed from her various interviews, they are not wrong about her leadership style.
Despite Sophie ‘s brilliant resume and MBE in under a week she has undermined herself with increasingly contradictory and vituperative statements about Harry. Yesterday a squaddie posted a video of her gushing with pride at a global organisation like Netflix covering the Sentebale Polo event! Yet on Sunday she was disdainful of Netflix filming HER charity event and being upstaged by Meg and her famous friend (obviously couldn’t bring herself to say Serena Williams name out loud?!) Didn’t she appreciate how much either women could charge to make a personal appearance given the publicity they attract? She does not present herself like a professional lawyer but then consligere Rawlinson is also an expert mediator??
I usually try to stay away from making negative comments, but I’m really angry at the way this woman has defamed Harry and at the way the American media is running with “Harry accused of bullying” headlines and going into Meghan’s a bully for moving Sophie away from her husband in a picture. Well okay, look at the first picture above. There is no place Sophie’s hand can be other than on Harry’s butt. You can see her silver bracelet on her wrist right where her hand disappears behind his butt. Obviously there is a whole lot more to the Sentabale situation than that, but if the media is going to talk about posing for pictures at that event, why isn’t her blatantly inappropriate behavior being called out?
Ms Chandauka has widely used the title “Dr” both for the Sentebale charity and other business settings. This is a reference to an honorary award from Coventry University and is not an academic or medical qualification.
A spokeswoman for Sentebale told the BBC that the use of “Dr” was a “matter of personal choice” and there was “no legal restriction preventing honorary degree recipients from using the title”.
The above clarification is from latest BBC website report on Sentebale.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy0l99w12mo
It is misleading for Sophie to call herself Dr because it does give the impression that she is either a medical or academic doctor with a published doctorate.
Fantasy take: cross-examination over her honorific!
This situation is becoming more absurd and the princes and former trustees aren’t saying anything, which is so frustrating. They haven’t said anything publicly against this woman which is prudent , while she mud slings, At this point the charity will be turned to dust. I don’t understand the strategy but all eyes are on Harry, only Harry and he need to get his house in order. This is like the stuff of hostile corporate takeovers. Meanwhile what happens on the ground in Lesotho? Instead of keep calm/carry on, don’t be bringing a knife to a gun fight. I really hope the Princes have a strategy. Maybe they really just want to walk away. Who knows.
There was already an interview with a board member published on the Times? I am not sure they are gonna talk more, since there is an official investigation now. I would expect both Princes to make another statement after the investigation is completed and published.
https://www.change.org/p/call-for-resignation-of-dr-sophie-chanduaka-reinstatement-of-original-sentebale-board
People might like to sign this petition.
Done!
Thank you! 🙏
Signed! Thank you Lady Digby
This must be done!!!! 👍
The BM is starting to throw Chandauka under the bus. https://x.com/TheDuchessZone/status/1907144124244844935?t=Otu7T57k5A6cp7nbb_q_xA&s=19. No surprise.
Well that didn’t take long! She can play the media for a short while but it will be her 15 minutes of fame, then the vultures will start coming for her. Harry, Seeiso and the board members have done the right thing by remaining silent for the most part — let her dig her own grave, the truth will out.
I don’t know how she forgot she is a black woman. There is nothing BM loves more than taking down anyone non-white. She was a useful tool to hurt H&M, now they are gonna come for her. I bet Will won’t do sh*t to protect her.