Mbabane – The High Court has dismissed a constitutional application by a local domestic worker seeking to strike down a legislative provision that excludes domestic servants from receiving mandatory workplace injury compensation.
A full bench comprising Judges B.S. Dlamini, T.M. Mlangeni, and S. Masuku delivered the judgment today, June 9, 2026, ruling that the legal challenge was fatally flawed. The court found that the applicant’s legal team failed to ground their formal prayers in a specific section of the Bill of Rights, rendering the requested relief vague and incapable of enforcement.
The legal battle was initiated by Hlumsile Rose Matsebula alongside the Swaziland Domestic Workers Union against the Minister of Labour and Social Security. The case arose after Matsebula suffered a severe workplace injury on June 6, 2017, when her finger was crushed by a mince-meat grinder at a private household in Mbabane, resulting in the tip being completely severed.
When her employer approached the Workmen’s Compensation Board to legally compensate her, authorities revealed that Section 2(2)(c) of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1983 explicitly excludes domestic servants from the definition of a workman.
Matsebula challenged the law as an unfair, indirect discrimination against economically vulnerable black women, arguing it infringed upon constitutional guarantees of dignity and equal protection under the law.
Conversely, the state opposed the application, arguing that domestic work carries unique regulatory and enforcement hurdles within private homes, and noted that injured employees still retain alternative compensation avenues through common law lawsuits.
The court’s decision ultimately hinged on technical pleading errors rather than the underlying socio-economic merits of the case.
Judge B.S. Dlamini noted that while the applicant’s founding affidavit discussed violations of the right to equality, the actual notice of motion failed to reference these specific constitutional clauses.
The court emphasized that it cannot grant a generic declaration of unconstitutionality because doing so would improperly imply that a single provision contradicts the entire supreme law of the country.
Although the state previously invited the applicants to amend their defective notice of motion to specify the exact rights violated, the applicant’s legal team declined the opportunity. Consequently, the bench dismissed the application but made no order as to costs, leaving the statutory exclusion of domestic workers from the national compensation scheme intact.
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