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When Prince Harry said he wanted to do something in his gap year to make his mother proud, someone suggested that he spend time in Lesotho. “I was like, where the hell’s that?” Harry recalled years later about the landlocked African country where around a quarter of the population is HIV positive. It was eventually decided that the 19-year-old Prince

and be hosted by the country’s Prince Seeiso. It was a visit that changed his life forever.

Something inside of me said you cannot, you cannot experience what you have experienced, in the beauty of the place that you have been to and yet the hideousness of what is actually attacking these people and what’s attacking the younger generation without actually giving

younger generation without actually giving something back,” the Prince said in a 2016 documentary about his decision to launch Sentebale in 2006 alongside Prince Seeiso to help vulnerable young people affected by Lesotho’s HIV epidemic.

The name they chose means “forget me not” in Sesotho, the official language of Lesotho, and was in tribute to their late mothers.

Harry has returned to the country many times, bringing the struggles of Lesotho’s children to the attention of the world’s media and to wealthy donors. The Sentebale Polo Cup, launched in 2010, became their staple annual fundraising event and saw Prince Harry compete with friend and professional polo player Nacho Figueras to raise more than $13 million.
In 2015, Sentebale opened a new building with rooms named after Princess Diana and William and Harry’s beloved childhood nanny Olga Powell. The Prince’s bond with the children supported by Sentebale was sincere and enduring. An orphan that he struck up a particular rapport with on his 2004 visit, Mutsu Potsane, was invited to the grounds of Windsor Castle for Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding.

It was unequivocal that Harry would take Sentebale with him when he left royal life. It was this charity that the Prince chose to receive his 50% share of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund when Sussex Royal ceased to operate. He also gave $1.5 million of the proceeds of his memoir Spare to Sentebale. Since 2006, the charity had flourished to become everything that defines the Prince; honoring his mother’s memory, his passion for helping the most needy, and his love of Africa.
So when news broke this week that Prince Harry, along with Prince Seeiso, had resigned from his role as patron it felt at first like it couldn’t possible. Surely they are Sentebale, it had seemed. But while in spirit that may be true, legally it is of course not the case.
As information filtered out, it became clear that a monumental feud had taken place between Sentebale’s founders and trustees on one side, and the chair of the board, Dr. Sophie Chandauka, and her supporters on the other. Searing statements were released by both parties.

The princes and trustees said that their decisions came after Dr. Chandauka had been asked to resign and she had responded by taking legal action against the charity. The Princes said that they were “in shock” and “heartbroken” that they therefore had to carry out the “unthinkable” resignations

Dr. Chandauka did not hold back in her criticism, some of which seemed pointed directly towards Prince Harry. “There are people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people, and then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct,” she said in a statement. She claimed she had blown the whistle on “abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir” within the organization. This has been denied by one former trustee.
So, more than 20 years on from its conception, where does this leave Sentebale? A string of changes were made earlier this week to Sentebale’s leadership team as the charity released a statement indicating that it did not need its founders or patrons to continue its work. “While trustees are key for governance and regulation, and patrons—especially founders—are an honour to have, it’s the people in the field who are advancing the work, no matter what,” the statement read. Dr. Chanduaka said she has reported the trustees to the Charity Commission—the government department that acts as the regulator of charities in England and Wales—which has said that it is aware of the concerns.

The charity now has the seemingly vast challenge of trying to flourish without either of its royal patrons and in the wake of the public furore that has ensued. How it fares will be closely watched.

For Harry, this is a devastating blow that cuts him off further from the legacy that he started as a working royal. When he stepped back in 2020, he had to give up his honorary military affiliations and many of his charity patronages. Sentebale was one of the few things that he could continue with.
However, what cannot be in any doubt is Harry’s ongoing commitment to the young people he first decided to help all those years ago. Not long before he left royal life, in January 2020, he gave a poignant speech to Sentebale supporters in London where he said, “My work and commitment for this charity, that I founded 14 years ago now, will never falter.”

How things play out with Sentebale’s future could yet have more twists and turns. But if there are no roads back for him, then the Prince is no stranger to forging a new path.