The Manual Workers Union has asked the Court of Appeal to declare the entire Public Service Bargaining Council (PSBC) Constitution null and void and to set aside the appointment of its secretary, escalating a dispute that could reshape public service bargaining in Botswana.
According to The Business Weekly & Review, the union filed the application for leave to appeal on November 3, 2026, naming the Attorney General, the Botswana Teachers Union (BTU), the Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU) and the Botswana Land Boards and Local Authorities Workers Union (BLLAWU) among the respondents. The move follows Justice Maripe's High Court judgment that signing the PSBC Constitution does not, by itself, confer membership of the council.
How the dispute began
The trouble dates back to January 30, 2026, when the PSBC was due to begin operating. At that meeting, the council appointed Andrew Motsamai as secretary and Tobokani Rari as deputy secretary. Manual Workers representatives walked out. They refused to vote or sign the resolution, then approached the High Court to have the meeting declared invalid.
The court dismissed the challenge, not on the merits of the meeting itself, but on a preliminary question: whether a union that did not belong to the council had standing to challenge its affairs. Justice Maripe held that under sections 50(2) and 52 of the Public Service Act, read with clauses 7 and 8 of the PSBC Constitution, membership required admission and proof of a 4,000-member threshold. The union, the court found, had not demonstrated that it met the threshold.
The union had signed the constitution on May 13, 2025, signed it again on October 17, 2025, and was present when it was registered on November 24, 2025. The judge nevertheless ruled that signing the document did not amount to admission as a member.
The circular trap
In its Court of Appeal papers, the Manual Workers Union argues that the High Court created a circular trap. The union was a founding member of the Reference Committee, an interim structure agreed on December 10, 2025 to give effect to the constitution after its registration. It attended meetings, including the contentious January 30 meeting, participated through its representative Elsinah Botsalano in the December 2025 amendment on the membership threshold, and signed every version of the constitution.
The union asks how the same constitution it signed can now be used to deny it standing to enforce that agreement. Citing the Govender case and the contractual principle of pacta sunt servanda, agreements must be kept, it argues that membership in a voluntary association is governed by its constitution, not by a statutory test imported after the fact.
The union also accuses the Attorney General and the other respondents of approbating and reprobating: relying on the constitution to exclude Manual Workers while disregarding its binding force when it comes to obligations owed to the signatories.
A council that cannot function?
Through S. Thapelo Attorneys, the union describes the current PSBC as