Royal tour day 10: James Weir recaps Meghan and Harry in South Africa
After throwing a grenade into the royal press pack, Prince Harry was not to be messed with as he stared them down on the final day of the royal tour.
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Meghan and Harry’s final day on their royal tour of South Africa began with strange silence.
A pebbled ground stretched down the side of the Youth Employment Services Hub in the suburb of Tembisa — an area about an hour outside of Johannesburg, surrounded by “mkuku”, a local word for “shacks”.
About 12 hours after unleashing on the British press and launching legal action, the prince now had to face the final day of a visit that was supposed to permeate positivity and dispel the toxic headlines that had hounded his marriage for a year.
What effect did the lawsuit have on the tour? That’s up for debate. It dropped at a very unusual hour and certainly overshadowed the tour’s easy breezy intentions.
Everything was now as it should be: the Duke had reunited with his wife and child after six days away. That frazzled palace minder Marnie was back and in control. What happened to her 2IC Julie? Who knows. Still, the Duke wasn’t happy.
A soberness settled over the grounds as a lone royal Range Rover purred in the side of the premises and pulled up on a paved slab. Media almost missed the arrival.
There was zero fanfare — almost as if the couple was hoping to go unacknowledged. But there was no way this appearance — the first sighting since Harry launched his extraordinary take-down — was getting missed.
Cars whooshed down the highway and passing taxis honked at the sight of TV cameras. The clicks of paparazzi cameras snapped at rapid-fire pace as the Duke and Duchess slid out of the Range and teetered over the narrow concrete pathway. They avoided the gravel. A goofy gravel walk just would’ve deteriorated the gravity of the serious situation they had ignited just hours earlier.
This wasn’t the usual Harry we all know — the Harry who jokes around with little kids and presents himself with a level of cheekiness your nan thinks is adorable. This was adult Harry — the grown up with a wife and a child. A man demanding respect.
In tabloid copy, he was stony-faced and downcast. In reality, he was exactly this. The Prince had had enough.
Usually this kind of grumpiness could be forgiven. Everyone gets cranky at the end of a two-week holiday. You’ve got no more clean outfits, the hotel pillows suck and the foreign tap water tastes weird. You wanna go home. But this crankiness had nothing to do with funky tasting tap water.
Harry has always been overprotective of Meghan and this was more than evident on this day. He held her by the hand and led her inside the nearby shipping container. She smiled the smile of a wife who didn’t want to make things awkward in public. And Harry humphed along like the husband who didn’t care about the scene he was making.
Outside, after meeting the women responsible for Blossom Care Solutions — a facility that produces up to 80,000 100 per cent compostable and affordable sanitary towels a month — Harry finally spoke. He was his usual fumbling, charming and sincere self. While the remarks were centred around disadvantaged communities in Africa, a personal note rang loud. In his lashing of the British press 12 hours earlier, he warned of history repeating itself and said his “deepest fear” was his “wife falling victim to the same powerful forces” his mother experienced.
This statement influenced his remarks in the open air of this outer JoBurg township and it was hard to ignore.
“Ever since I came to this country as a young boy, trying to cope with something I could never possibly describe, Africa has held me in an embrace that I will never forget and feel incredibly fortunate for that,” he said, referencing the times his father took him to the region following his mother’s death.
“Every time I come here, I know that I’m not alone. 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, connection with others and the natural environment.
“And as I raise my own son, I’m going to make sure that what I’ve learnt here — the value of the natural world, the value of community and friendship — is something that I can pass on to him.”
He made clear his position of being able to fight for the less fortunate and pledged to spend the rest of his life doing so.
“…We will do everything we can to play our part in building a better world. We will always seek to challenge injustice and speak out for those who may feel unheard,” he said.
Look, it’s around now I was discovered and my cover was completely blown. The British press found out about all the impersonations I’d been doing of them. And Marnie? Don’t even get me started. That dame is more than aware of these columns. Let’s just say it has been brought to her attention that she is fast becoming a rising star in Australia.
This either came about one of two ways: there’s a snitch among us, or the British journos have access to the internet. I think it’s the former.
I booked a flight right outta JoBerg immediately. Who knows what these turkeys would’ve done to me.
Looking around the mkukus, I tried to locate a stylish coffee shop to hide out in while all this blew over. But there were no stylish coffee shops in sight because, you know, it was a township of mkukus. I could’ve knocked on the tin door of a random clay shack and asked for the nearest Gloria Jeans but that just would’ve been fruitless and out-of-touch.
Meghan and Harry tried to ignore the awkward vibes of this final day’s first event and slid back into their Range Rover and sped off to their next appointments where they met Nelson Mandela’s widow Graca Machel and president Cyril Ramaphosa.
And what happened to me? Well, Graham the PPO finally asked me out on a date. It was all I ever wanted — I’ve been obsessed with him for literally hours. You’d think I’d say yes, huh? I didn’t. I’m not Kate Hudson in every rom-com from the 2000s.
I was caught up in the moment — the spontaneous and hedonistic nature of life on the road. It was the royal fantasy I was in love with — not Graham. I’m not going to throw in my life and move to the UK. I have a Fitness First PT waiting for me back home and you bozos need me to recap the upcoming season of Married At First Sight. That’s the kind of life people dream of. I can’t abandon that to live in the maids’ quarters of a dusty old castle — and I don’t care how well Graham fills out a pair of skinny chinos.
Mainly, though? I can’t stand British accents.
James Weir is in South Africa covering the royal tour. He is a guest of South African Tourism and Cathay Pacific.
For more observations on mkukus and banging in the back of a Range Rover, follow him on Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir
Originally published as Royal tour day 10: James Weir recaps Meghan and Harry in South Africa
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