Harry and Meghan in a township with South Africa’s highest murder rate

  • Video report by ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship

Just two minutes walk away from the church Prince Harry and Meghan are visiting as they kick of their 10 day tour in Africa, I met a mechanic on the roadside who showed me the bullet wound in his leg.

Hassan Nziyemana was shot when robbers raided a workshop nearby and fired their guns as they left.

The bullet is still there as he hasn't found a medic to remove it.

Across the road a 13-year-old girl told me how she worries every night that men will pick her locks and rob her house.

Azola lives in a house with her mother, grandmother, aunties, uncles and cousins.

You couldn’t accuse Harry and Meghan of ignoring the real problems facing South Africa.

Parts of the township are so dangerous that emergency services avoid going to those areas in fear of being attacked. Credit: ITV News

This corner of Cape Town has the highest murder rate in the country.

There are parts of this township, called Nyanga, where ambulance crews can’t go to give treatment because they are likely to get attacked.

Even the police won’t go to some areas.

It shows the reality of the crime wave which has been sweeping across this country in the years since the Apartheid.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex left Archie in the care of his nanny while they completed this visit.

Meghan during a visit to the Justice Desk initiative, a workshop that teaches children about their rights in Cape Town. Credit: PA

At the church they came to, the charity The Justice Desk, teaches women and girls self-defence for if, and some argue when, they get attacked.

Harry told the women here: “No man is born to cause harm to women.”

And the Duke added: “I wanted to ensure that our first visit as a family – with my wife by my side – focused on the significant challenges facing millions of South Africans, while acknowledging the hope that we feel so strongly here.”

Meghan said that she “applauded” them for “standing up for what’s right in the face of adversity”.

The Duchess told them: “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.”

Their visit to this part of the Western Cape was kept under wraps for security reasons until shortly before they arrived.

Later, they will also visit the District Six museum in Cape Town which is dedicated to telling the story of the forced evacuations of people from their homes in this suburb by under the Apartheid regime in the 1960s and 1970s.