Capacity: Judge
First Appointed as a Judge: January 2016 (Labour Court)
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: June 1972
Qualifications: BLC (1993) LLB (1995) LLM (2005)(University of Pretoria)
Key Judgments:
- Nortje v Regenesys Management (Pty) LTD (JS776/15 & J1824/2015) (27 February 2020) ZALCJHB
- Naidoo and Others v Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (C865/2016) [2018] ZALCCT 38; [2019] 3 BLLR 291 (LC); (2019) 40 ILJ 864 (LC) (12 December 2018)
- AngloGold Ashanti Ltd t/a AngloGold Ashanti and Others v Association for Mineworkers and Construction Union and Others [2019] ZALCJHB 169; (2019) 40 ILJ 1552 (LC); [2019] 7 BLLR 646 (LC) (15 March 2019)
- Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and Others v Bafokeng Rasimone Management Services (Pty) Ltd and Others (J2578/2015) [2017] ZALCJHB 60 (21 February 2017)
Candidate Biography | Updated September 2026
Judge Prinsloo is a Judge of the Labour Court.
Judge Christina Prinsloo’s career has followed a distinctly labour-law path, spanning human resources management, advocacy, scholarship and the Bench. She holds BLC and LLB degrees, as well as an LLM specialising in Labour Law, all from the University of Pretoria.
She began her career at the Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs, where she served as Deputy Director of Human Resources Management from 1996 to 2005. In this role, she handled disciplinary matters and helped ensure compliance with the applicable disciplinary code and the Labour Relations Act, among other things.
In 2006, Judge Prinsloo joined the Pretoria Society of Advocates and practised as an advocate until 2015. Her practice was firmly rooted in employment and labour law. She represented employers and individuals before the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration and various bargaining councils, while also acting as an arbitrator in private arbitrations. She appeared regularly in the Labour Court and occasionally in the Labour Appeal Court and High Court.
Prinsloo then served as an Acting Judge in the Labour Court between January 2013 and June 2015, until her permanent appointment as a Judge of the Labour Court in January 2016, during which she penned a whopping 541 judgments.
Prinsloo’s impressive judgment count includes Nortje and Others v Regenesys Management, where Judge Prinsloo found nine employees’ retrenchments procedurally unfair and four substantively unfair, citing inadequate consultation and unfairly applied selection criteria. She ordered reinstatement for three employees and compensation for the others. Although the Labour Appeal Court overturned her procedural-fairness finding in 2022, it upheld the substantive-unfairness findings. In 2024, the Constitutional Court dismissed Regenesys’s appeal and upheld the employees’ cross-appeal, confirming Prinsloo’s jurisdiction to determine their procedural-fairness claim.
In Naidoo and Others v Parliament, Judge Prinsloo dismissed a wage-discrimination claim brought by 69 parliamentary protection officers who earned less than newly recruited colleagues. She held that an allegedly arbitrary pay difference alone does not establish unfair discrimination; an unlisted ground must be comparable to the statutory grounds in its potential to impair dignity or cause similarly serious harm. The Labour Appeal Court endorsed her interpretation in 2020 but allowed the employees an opportunity to amend their claim.
Judge Prinsloo also served as an assessor in the North Gauteng High Court in S v Prinsloo. In that matter, she assisted with preparing part of the judgment dealing with contraventions of the Banks Act 94 of 1990 and other legislation.
Her contribution to the law extends well beyond the courtroom. Judge Prinsloo identifies her three published, co-authored books as among her most significant contributions to the legal profession: Principles and Practice of Labour Law and Law@Work, both published by LexisNexis, and the Labour Court Manual, published by Juta.
Judge Prinsloo remains a member of the South African Society for Labour Law. Her commitment to widening access to legal assistance is reflected in her pro bono work for individuals and her support for both the University of Pretoria Law Clinic and SASLAW’s pro bono offices.
With experience on nearly every side of a labour dispute, as a human resources practitioner, advocate, arbitrator, author and judge, Prinsloo brings to the Bench a practical and deeply informed understanding of the world of work. Having dedicated her career to labour law, Prinsloo now hopes to gain a seat on the Bench of South Africa’s highest labour court.