Philippa Mdluli

Life and crime

Mdluli, a native Swazi woman, had become a successful restaurant owner in Mbabane, the country's capital. By the late 1970s, she was operating the Lifa Restaurant and had become obsessed with rituals (muti), which, in her view, involved a human sacrifice to make her wish come true. In March 1980, driven by her desire to earn more money, she manipulated a young male employee of her restaurant into giving up his young daughter to her in order to perform a form of muti ritual to broaden her business career.

One day in March 1980, Mdluli took Thuli with the complicity of the child's father, murdering the girl by suffocation. She subsequently mutilated the body and removed several of the child's organs to make potions that she later served to the restaurant's customers. Her trial began before the High Court in early 1982, where she was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to death shortly afterward.

Execution and aftermath

After losing her appeals and being denied clemency by the royal regency, Mdluli's path to execution was paved. Sometime in early to mid-1983, the acting royal regency signed Mdluli's execution warrant, and her hanging was scheduled for the early hours of Saturday, 2 July 1983. Mdluli was hanged at the Sidwashini Prison outside of Mbabane. Since then, the country has become a de facto abolitionist nation, imposing few death sentences in extreme cases to satisfy statutory punishments. In March 1998, the government attempted to reactivate executions by ordering the hanging of Daniel Mbhundlana Dlamini, a cattle farmer convicted of the ritual slaying of a 9-year-old boy. The then-minister of justice Paul Kumalo told media that the government was seeking to hire an executioner and that women were "welcome" to take the position, adding that they had received offers from countries as far from Eswatini as Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Maweni Simelane, another minister inside the justice cabinet, stated that an executioner was needed to "clear" death row at Matsapha Central Prison. The chief prosecutor, Jabulani Maseko, further stated that most of the cases on death row were cases of murder that had been handed a sentence of death many years before. The successor of King Sobhuza II, King Mswati III, centralized power around him after taking office, showing a much closer stance to clemency in cases of capital punishment. As a result, the moratorium on executions in Eswatini continues to be in place as of 2026.