Prince William joined Heidi Klum and Winnie Harlow the day after his Earthshot Prize Awards for a traditional South African barbecue in Kalk Bay in Cape Town where crowds gathered to see him
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Prince William greets well wishers in South Africa
Prince William said he woke up feeling emotional the day after the Earthshot Prize awards ceremony and excited about how well it had gone.
Joining presenters Heidi Klum, Winnie Harlow, Billy Porter and Tobe Nwigwe for a traditional South African Braai, or barbecue, at Kalk Bay in Cape Town, William told them: “I really appreciate all your support,” to which Winnie relied: “It was an honour.”
William said: “I woke up this morning feeling quite emotional and excited.” Heidi Klum, who presented one of the Earthshot awards the night before, said: “I was emotional on the stage.” William had travelled by boat to the picturesque fishing village of Kalk Bay on the final day of his four day visit to Cape Town to see the work of Abalobi, a 2023 Earthshot prize finalist which works with local fishermen to categorise and track their hauls.
He was met with shouts of “We love you, William” and met Abalobi co-founder Serge Raemaekers who introduced the prince to local fishermen and a team of fisherwomen involved in the Abalobi monitoring programme. Fisherwoman and lead in Abalobi’s monitoring programme Casha de Vos told the prince that they measure and weigh the fish before cataloguing the details on the Abalobi database. William held a yellow tail fish and told the fishermen: “You’re the trail blazers. You’re the leaders.”
He then walked back down the harbour wall to where several Abalobi staff were barbecuing fish for William to try while a guitarist played for him. At one point locals swimming in the bay shouted up “hello Prince William ” and he waved back to them.
However a small group of protestors shouted “Our people, our bones” and one held a banner which read: “William, you have no sovereignty here.” Others shouted “You are welcome, we love you.” Duwayne Baulse, 29, who has been a fisherman for 15 years since he left school, shouted angrily from his fish stall kept apart from William by the medal cordon. The independent fishermen and women said they all were angry because they were not included in the engagement.
William was meeting 2023 Earthshot Finalist, Abalobi, Kalk Bay Harbour. Duwayne said afterwards: “They aren’t based here and they don’t buy our fish. People only come here when it is sunny. We are here in the rain and storms. They have excluded us. William has not come to look at our fish. No one told us the prince was coming. Afalobi don’t support us. This is our harbour.
“We are not angry with him (William). We want people to come here more often. Not this set up. It’s like a stage they put on in North Korea.”
Nicholette De Mink brandished a sigh that read ‘William you have no sovereignty on our country’. She said: “He needs to leave. He has no jurisdiction here. We have ordered him to leave. He is not acknowledging us but we will shout it anyway.”
Sarah Niemond from the fishing community of Buffeljagsbaai told him that a pot of her jam had once been taken back to Buckingham Palace. She said: “Seven years ago someone from your country bought this South African jam and they bought it and took it back to England and they gave it to your grandmother and that jam was standing in the picture.” She said it was an honour to meet the Prince face to face.
William then sat down to try the fish with his fellow Earthshot presenters. Speaking afterwards, Heidi Klum said: “He has been so amazing, so welcoming to all of us and quite normal in a way.”
Winnie Harlow said that what William was doing reminded her of the work carried out by his late mother, Princess Diana. The model said: I’ve heard so much about Diana and her charity work and being with him really felt like an extension of her. It really was a beautiful moment to see him following on her footsteps.”
After the engagement, Abalobi executives addressed the small but vocal protest. Serge Raemaekers, the co-founder of Abalobi, said: “I have a feeling that the noise in the background was very much around the fact that we haven’t reached these fishing communities yet. We’re still a relatively small programme trying to scale and as you can see here there are quite a lot of boats with fishermen and fisherwomen that come from a lot of different areas.
“Through apartheid and post-apartheid there’s no fishing community here anymore. There’s a whole bunch of fishers who are able to have their boat here but they live far and wide. We haven’t been able to reach them all but we’ve started working with the cooperatives from Kalk Bay.
“I’m imagining that this fishery felt ‘Hey, I’m being left out here’ and I understand. In the last couple of years small scale fishers have had a tricky engagement with obtaining fishing rights.”
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