JOHANNESBURG: Britain’s Prince Harry paid an emotional tribute on Wednesday to Africa and its people on the last day of his 10-day tour, calling the continent his “second home” and pledging to do all he could to help Africans improve their lot.
In a speech to young entrepreneurs in Johannesburg, his wife Meghan by his side, Harry said he drew inspiration from Africans’ generosity and resilience.
He made no reference to a lawsuit the couple has filed against a British tabloid newspaper that cast a shadow over the end of their trip.
“Despite extreme hardship and ongoing challenges on so many levels, people are generous, they are strong, humble and incredibly optimistic,” Harry said.
Striking a very personal note, he said visiting Africa from boyhood had helped him come to terms with the tragic death of his mother Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
“... Africa has held me in an embrace that I will never forget ...,” he said. “I always feel — wherever I am on this continent — that the community around me provides a life that is enriching, and is rooted in the simplest things — connection, connections with others and the natural environment.”
Echoing her husband’s warm words, a beaming Meghan said Africa’s potential was “astronomical.”
Harry’s speech came a day after the couple began legal proceedings against the Mail on Sunday newspaper over the publication of a private letter. Harry accused sections of the British press of “bullying” and compared the treatment he said his wife was having to endure to that suffered by Diana.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their four-month-old son Archie arrived in South Africa on Sept. 23 on their first overseas tour as a family. Harry then visited Botswana, Angola and Malawi on his own, while his family stayed in South Africa.
On Wednesday, the couple visited a youth employment hub in the Tembisa township outside Johannesburg and were provided with refreshments by a chef competition winner and entrepreneur who runs a community catering business.
Unemployment in South Africa hit an 11-year high earlier this year, and the project tries to equip young people with a range of skills and entrepreneurial opportunities.
In his speech Harry stressed the importance of such projects, saying Africa needs to create 20 million new jobs by 2035. He also announced a British government grant of 8 million pounds ($9.8 million) to help young Africans acquire new skills.
The couple visited a greenhouse where a young entrepreneur explained how the facility, which uses aquaponics, had created opportunities for him and a supply of fresh, local produce for the community’s restaurants.
They also met a number of young women, dressed in white lab coats, working at a facility producing up to 80,000 completely compostable, affordable sanitary towels per month.
Later on Wednesday, the couple will meet Graca Machel, widow of late president Nelson Mandela, and attend a reception celebrating the business relationship between Britain and South Africa.
UK’s Prince Harry and Meghan pay tribute to “embrace” of Africa on last day of tour
UK’s Prince Harry and Meghan pay tribute to “embrace” of Africa on last day of tour
- Harry said he drew inspiration from Africans’ generosity and resilience
- Echoing her husband’s warm words, a beaming Meghan said Africa’s potential was “astronomical”
After nearly 7 weeks and many rumors, Bolivia’s ex-leader reappears in his stronghold
- Morales was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile
- He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country
LA PAZ: Bolivia’s long-serving socialist former leader, Evo Morales, reappeared Thursday in his political stronghold of the tropics after almost seven weeks of unexplained absence, endorsing candidates for upcoming regional elections and quieting rumors he had fled the country in the wake of the US seizure of his ally, Venezuela’s ex-President Nicolás Maduro.
The weeks of hand-wringing over Morales’ fate showed how little the Andean country knows about what’s happening in the remote Chapare region, where the former president has spent the past year evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges, and how vulnerable it is to fears about US President Donald Trump’s potential future foreign escapades.
The media outlet of Morales’ coca-growing union, Radio Kawsachun Coca, released footage of Morales smiling in dark sunglasses as he arrived via tractor at a stadium in the central Bolivian town of Chimoré to address his supporters.
Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile, explained that he had come down with chikungunya, a mosquito-borne ailment with no treatment that causes fever and severe joint pain, and suffered complications that “caught me by surprise.”
“Take care of yourselves against chikungunya — it is serious,” the 66-year-old Morales said, appearing markedly more frail than in past appearances.
He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country, vowing to remain in Bolivia despite the threat of arrest under conservative President Rodrigo Paz, whose election last October ended nearly two decades of rule by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.
“Some media said, ‘Evo is going to leave, Evo is going to flee.’ I said clearly: I am not going to leave. I will stay with the people to defend the homeland,” he said.
Paz’s revival of diplomatic ties with the US and recent efforts to bring back the Drug Enforcement Administration — some 17 years after Morales expelled American anti-drug agents from the Andean country while cozying up to China, Russia, Cuba and Iran — have rattled the coca-growing region that serves as Morales’ bastion of support.
Paz on Thursday confirmed that he would meet Trump in Miami on March 7 for a summit convening politically aligned Latin American leaders as the Trump administration seeks to counter Chinese influence and assert US dominance in the region.
Before proclaiming the candidates he would endorse in Bolivia’s municipal and regional elections next month, Morales launched into a lengthy speech reminiscent of his once-frequent diatribes against US imperialism.
“This is geopolitical propaganda on an international scale,” he said of Trump’s bid to revive the Monroe Doctrine from 1823 in order to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. “They want to eliminate every left-wing party in Latin America.”
