Courts step in as eSwatini women await law change
Publish date: 03 August 2026
Issue Number: 1188
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: Constitutional
Women get a raw deal from parts of eSwatini’s customary law. It reduces widows to the status of children for the purpose of inheritance, just to give one example. The country’s Constitution requires Parliament to enact legislation fixing the problem and regulating the property rights of spouses. But, as Carmel Rickard has been discovering, eSwatini’s Parliament has failed to pass a law that does so. In her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, she explains why it matters – and what the courts have been doing in the face of this legislative hiatus.
