Prince Harry echoes Diana’s Angola walk
JOHANNESBURG — A body armor-wearing Prince Harry on Friday followed in the footsteps of his late mother, Princess Diana, whose walk through an active minefield in Angola years ago helped to lead to a global ban on the deadly weapons.
The prince walked through a dusty minefield marked with skull-and-crossbones warning signs, and was visiting the spot where Diana was famously photographed on a similar walk during her own Africa visit in 1997. That field in Huambo is now a busy street. The southern African nation is now years past a grinding civil war and hopes to be landmine-free by 2025, a goal of scores of countries around the world.
“Land mines are an unhealed scar of war,” Harry said in the town of Dirico. “By clearing the land mines, we can help this community find peace, and with peace comes opportunity.” He said retracing his mother’s path was “quite emotional.”
The prince said Angola still has more than 1,000 minefields left to clear, 22 years after his mother’s visit. “I wonder if she was still alive whether that would still be the case,” Harry said. “I’m pretty sure she would have seen it through.
“A staggering 60 million people around the world still live in fear and risk of land mines. We cannot turn our backs on them and leave a job half done,” he said.
Harry’s first official family tour with his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and their baby, Archie, will continue with stops in Malawi and further events in South Africa with a focus on issues including mental health and women’s empowerment.