I’m here as a wife, woman of colour and your sister, Meghan tells South Africa
SHE danced, she charmed the crowd, she hugged children – and then the Duchess of Sussex gave an electrifying speech in which she spoke proudly of her mixed heritage.
At the start of her ten- day tour with husband Harry and baby Archie, Meghan told an audience in South Africa she was there not just as a royal but ‘as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of colour and as your sister’.
It is the first time as a royal that the duchess has talked publicly about her biracial heritage. Her comments earned an emotional round of applause from her audience, many of them victims of sexual violence.
She and Prince Harry visited the township of Nyanga – South Africa’s ‘murder capital’ – shortly after arriving in Cape Town with their four-monthold son on a British Airways flight for their first official tour as a family.
Leaving Archie with his nanny at the British High Commissioner’s residence, the Sussexes made their way by police convoy to the township, which suffers from violent crime, chronic unemployment and high levels of HIV/Aids.
Much of the violence is directed against women – President Cyril Ramaphosa last week admitted that South Africa was one of ‘the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman’ as he announced emergency measures to tackle the problem.
According to the World Health Organisation, the murder rate among women there is five times the global average.
Harry and Meghan visited a Justice Desk initiative, which teaches children about their rights, self-awareness and safety, and provides self-defence classes and empowerment training for girls.
The duchess, who wore a £ 69 monochrome ethnic-print dress by sustainable Malawian label Mayamiko,
‘She sent shivers down my spine’
and her casually- dressed husband offered hugs and handshakes as they chatted with children and residents.
Meghan, 38, looked moved as she met female victims of rape, sexual assault and other violence, telling them that they could ‘go and change the world by supporting each other as sisters’. Both gave speeches to a large crowd. Harry, 35, said it was time to ‘redefine masculinity’ and that he wanted to be a positive role model for his son. ‘No man is born to cause harm to women, this is learned behaviour, and a cycle that needs to be broken,’ he said.
Meghan, who spoke without notes, said: ‘The rights of women and girls is something that is very close to my heart, and the cause I have spent the majority of my life advocating for, because I know that when women are empowered, the entire community flourishes.
‘So to be able to meet all of you today who are standing up for what’s right in the face of adversity, I applaud you.’
Turning to her personal experiences as the daughter of an African-American mother and a white father, she made clear her racial heritage was just as important to her as being a royal, saying: ‘May I just say that while I am here with my husband as a member of the Royal Family, I want you to know that for me I am here with you as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of colour and as your sister.
‘I am here with you and I am here for you, and I thank you so much for showing my husband and I the spirit of Ubuntu [humanity] and I look forward to our time over the next few days together.’ Jessica Dewhurst, who founded the Justice Desk, said afterwards: ‘ To hear her say she was standing here as a woman of colour sent shivers down my spine.
‘To be totally honest with you, when I heard that they wanted to say something I just thought it would be a “thank you for having us, goodbye”. But they tackled some real issues.’
As they left, Meghan and Harry stopped to dance with Lilitha Mazana, 23, who said: ‘Meghan was a good dancer. She’s very nice and I liked her very much. I’ve been dancing ten years and her dancing is fantastic.’ Later the royal couple met residents who were forcibly removed from their homes during South Africa’s Apartheid era.