A NEW MILLENNIUM FREE FROM DEATH PENALTY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA?

by Diana Mavunduse

There has been significant progress towards ending the use of death penalty in southern Africa following intense lobbying from human rights activists in the region.

Between 1996 and 1998, Angola, Mauritius and South Africa abolished the death penalty in their laws, joining Namibia and Mozambique, which had abolished it as of 1991.

"The main argument for the death penalty as a form of punishment is the belief or the expectation that death penalty reduces homicide and other violent crimes like rape and armed robbery," writes Rigmor Argen in ZimRights News.

In Swaziland, King Mswati III said, "death penalty should not be repealed, on the grounds that it would increase the threat of serious crimes, such as ritual murder."

Mswati also suggested that, in view of an increasing number of HIV cases, the judiciary in Swaziland should consider rape to be equal to murder in seriousness, a matter he hoped would be taken up urgently by the Ministry of Justice.

But critics see no relationship between crime and capital punishment. "Whether crime increases or not has nothing to do with the presence or absence of the death penalty," said Brain Spilg, a lawyer from Botswana.

He added, "crime is more related to subjects such as poverty, social inequality, poor housing, unemployment and the disappearance of formal or informal methods of social control."

Inter Africa Network for Human Rights (Afronet) Director, Ngande Mwananjiti said, "the most severe punishment should be life imprisonment with a view to reforming the criminal."

Studies conducted by the United Nations in 1998 concluded that there is no scientific proof that death penalty is more deterrent than lifetime imprisonment.

In Zambia, the voice leading the call for the abolition of capital punishment comes from former president Kenneth Kaunda who was mainly forced by circumstances during war time to sign scores of death warrants in his country.

"It has pained me to sign the death warrants during my tenure, I did so with utmost reluctance," said Kaunda.

The death penalty debate has become more topical in Zambia where 59 soldiers were recently sentenced to death for attempting to overthrow President Frederick Chiluba in October 1997.

In Botswana, an attempt was made to declare capital punishment unconstitutional in 1995, but regrettably the Court of Appeal held that it was constitutional.

In 1997, Malawian President Bakili Muluzi agreed to commute the sentences of all prisoners awaiting execution, and he pledged not to sign any orders of execution for the rest of his term.

In Zimbabwe, two prisoners were executed, and more than five others sentenced to death in 1998. Recently there has been an outcry by local NGOs against the sentencing of Sukoluhle Kachipare, who was convicted in March 1997 for inciting her 17-year-old maid, Masline Chibwara to murder her own new born baby.

If Kachipare is hanged, she will be the first woman to be executed in Zimbabwe since 1898, when the great spirit medium Mbuya Nehanda was hanged by the colonial regime.

"Death sentence is viewed as the most primitive way of meting out justice," said ZimRights former executive director David Chimhini. He added, "the legendary eye for an eye concept is outdated, inhumane, immoral and evil."

The main disadvantage with the use of death penalty according to Ditshwanelo, a Botswana human rights organisation, is the fact that it is the most final of all punishments. "If the convicted is later found innocent, there is no way of reversing the punishment."

Proponents of capital punishment argue that public opinion is in favour of death penalty. However, human rights organisations say that public opinion depends on how and when the questions are posed.

"The media and rumours play an unquestionable role in forming public opinion. It is likely that the public would accept abolition if governments took the lead in bringing it about," said Chimhini.

But evidence in South Africa, where it was banned, points to the contrary. There is growing public demand to re-endorse the death penalty to curb escalating crime. Early this month a Zimbabwean diplomat was murdered during a carjacking in South Africa, now considered the most dangerous country outside a war zone. (SARDC)