RICHARD EDEN: Damning video of Meghan and Harry’s charity chief that may point to OTHER simmering tensions in Sentebale row

When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex abandoned royal duties in 2020, Prince Harry spoke emotionally about his ‘great sadness’.   

In a speech before they left the UK, at The Ivy Chelsea Garden restaurant in west London, he admitted that he had desperately wanted to cling on to his links to the Armed Forces.

‘Our hope was to continue serving the Queen, the Commonwealth and my military associations, but without public funding. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible,’ the former Household Cavalry officer told guests bitterly at the charity event.

The only comfort to Harry was that he was to remain heavily involved with the two organisations that he had helped create himself: the Invictus Games for injured former servicemen and women, and Sentebale, the charity he co-founded to help African children orphaned by the Aids crisis and living in poverty.

Now, however, he has resigned from his beloved Sentebale in the most unpleasant and acrimonious circumstances possible – amid accusations of racism and bullying at the charity.

The storm began yesterday when I was shocked to learn that Mark Dyer had stepped down as a trustee of the organisation.

Sometimes known as Harry’s ‘second father’, 59-year-old Dyer has been a steadfast presence in the duke’s life. He stood by Harry through the death of his mother Diana, his days at Eton and Sandhurst and, finally, into his married life in Californian exile.

Dyer had been a trustee of Sentebale since its foundation in 2006 and it seems fair to say that the charity would never have materialised without his guidance.

The former Welsh Guards officer, who had been an equerry to Prince Charles in the 1990s, helped coordinate Harry’s gap year and travelled with him to Australia, Argentina, and, at the invitation of Harry’s friend Prince Seeiso, the impoverished, land-locked country of Lesotho.

The experience inspired Harry to establish Sentebale in tandem with Seeiso. From the outset, one of its trustees was Dyer, known as ‘Marko’ to family and friends.

In his excoriating 2023 memoir Spare Harry wrote: ‘Of all Pa’s people there was consensus that Marko was the best. The roughest, the toughest, the most dashing.’

When Dyer married Texan heiress Amanda Kline in 2010, Harry was an usher. 

Dyer returned the favour in 2018 when Harry married Meghan at Windsor, while his son, Jasper – who is Harry’s godson – was on duty as a page boy.

Dyer is also believed to be a godfather to Archie, the elder of Harry and Meghan’s two children.

With characteristic discretion, Dyer declined to comment on his departure from Sentebale when I contacted him yesterday.

However, I found it curious that the charity didn’t pay tribute to Dyer or four other trustees who also departed this week – two of whom had been in their post for only three years.

An extraordinary joint statement from Harry and Seeiso was subsequently leaked to The Times newspaper last night. ‘What’s transpired is unthinkable,’ they wrote. ‘We are in shock that we have to do this.

‘Nearly 20 years ago, we founded Sentebale in honour of our mothers. Sentebale means “forget-me-not” in Sesotho, the local language of Lesotho, and it’s what we’ve always promised for the young people we’ve served through this charity. Today is no different.

‘With heavy hearts, we have resigned from our roles as patrons of the organisation until further notice, in support of and solidarity with the board of trustees who have had to do the same. 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.’

The statement’s leak to The Times, given Harry’s relentless campaign against the popular Press, has left Sentebale’s chairman utterly bewildered.

Sophie Chandauka, the Zimbabwe-born lawyer who was appointed to be the trustee chairman last year, claimed to the Daily Mail that there was a ‘cover-up’ at the charity.

She blasted ‘weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny and misogynoir [discrimination against black women]’.

Dr Chandauka also took a swipe at ‘people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people’.

In an apparent reference to Harry, she said such people ‘then play the victim card and use the very Press they disdain’.

She added defiantly: ‘For me, this is not a vanity project from which I can resign when I am called to account.

‘I am an African who has had the privilege of a world-class education and career. I will not be intimidated. I must stand for something. I stand for those other women who do not have the ways and means.’

It may not be just Harry with whom Dr Chandauka has failed to hit it off. There was a highly awkward moment between her and Meghan at a fundraising polo match for Sentebale in Miami last year.

As I pointed out at the time on the Mail’s hit YouTube programme, Palace Confidential, Meghan was filmed asking Dr Chandauka not to stand next to the duke at the trophy presentation.

The former actress could be seen in video footage requesting that Dr Chandauka move to another spot in the group, insisting that she be in the middle of the huddle next to her husband.

Moments before, Meghan had kissed her husband to celebrate his win – with a Netflix camera crew in tow to capture the moment for his forthcoming TV series on polo.

The serious problems at Sentebale have been known to me for some years. In July 2023, I revealed that advertising guru Johnny Hornby had stood down from the charity 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.

Harry’s close fried Andrew Tucker, whom he affectionately calls ‘Tucks’, also stepped down from his senior position at Sentebale after almost a decade the same month.

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

Miller was to be the last London-based chief executive of Sentebale in what I interpreted to be another sign of Harry and Meghan’s cutting links with Britain.

‘This shift reflects our continued commitment to being guided by voices from within the region we serve,’ said Harry and Seeiso in a joint statement at the time.

However some of those voices ‘from within the region’ – most notably Dr Chandauka’s – are now saying things with which they disagree.

The Charity Commission has begun an investigation into Sentebale after concerns were raised over its governance.

It will be fascinating to see whether Harry is ever able to return to the charity he named after his mother Princess Diana’s favourite flower, the forget-me-not.

Or will Sentebale be yet another part of his royal legacy that is consigned to the past?

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