2 weeks ago
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In what appears to be the latest stage of their plot to present themselves as the alternative royal family, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will undertake a very regal ‘tour’ of Nigeria next week.
Invited by the West African nation’s highest-ranking military official, the Chief of Defence Staff, Prince Harry and Meghan are guaranteed to receive the sort of security which they expected British taxpayers to provide.
Harry, you might recall, sought a judicial review of the Home Office’s decision to strip him, Meghan, and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, of their automatic right to police security in Britain after they chose to quit royal duties and seek their fortune across the Atlantic. King Charles’s younger son lost the case in February, with the case estimated to have cost him about £1million, including his own legal costs and those due to the Home Office.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their royal tour in South Africa in 2019
Next week, there will be no such worries for the wealthy couple, with security paid for by the government of Nigeria, a country where an estimated 87million people live below the poverty line.
Harry and Meghan are visiting after the Duke struck up a conversation with the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, in Germany last September at the Invictus Games Dusseldorf.
No doubt, the ‘royal tour’ will be good for Brand Sussex and will highlight what the couple could have achieved for the Commonwealth had they stuck with the Windsors. But I do wonder if Harry’s time in Africa could be better spent addressing a scandal at a charity hit with allegations of abuse.
African Parks, a conservation charity of which he is a director, is facing further accusations of human rights abuses that include extra-judicial killings and violent beatings.
Fresh allegations of brutality in Zambia by rangers jointly managed by African Parks have emerged following the Mail on Sunday’s front-page report in January about armed guards engaged in beatings, rape and torture of the Baka tribal people in the Republic of the Congo.
The charity - which manages parks in 12 African countries, with 1,400 guards patrolling protected land almost the size of Britain - claims that it saves wildlife by working with local communities. And prior to the allegations being made, Harry, the charity’s president for six years until he joined the governing board of directors last year, boasted: ‘The African Parks model is exactly what conservation should be about - putting people at the heart of the solution.’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take selfies with fans during the Invictus Games Dusseldorf in Germany last September, where they struck up a conversation with the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa
But now allegations of brutality have surfaced in Zambia’s Bangweulu Wetlands, a conservation area almost the size of Devon that is home to 50,000 indigenous people who have the right to ‘sustainably harvest’ natural resources such as fish, antelope and rabbits.
Fiore Longo, campaign director of Survival International, which fights for the rights of indigenous people, says: ‘This is another case of abuse and violence supposedly in the name of conservation.’
Her group wrote to Harry last year about ‘appalling human rights abuses’ in Congo’s Odzala-Kokoua National Park. Harry’s spokesman said he ‘immediately escalated’ the allegations to the chairman and chief executive of African Parks.
The charity told the Mail on Sunday that none of the investigative teams had yet visited the park. There is no suggestion that Harry had any knowledge of the allegations about what happened in Zambia.
African Parks said: ‘While there have been incidents that we condemn, suggesting African Parks is responsible for structural misconduct in the area would be false.’
What better destination for Harry and Meghan’s next African tour?
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