Zim banishes death penalty

• Published date: 24 September 2022
• Publication title: The Herald

Sikhumbuzo Moyo Bulawayo Bureau IT'S been 6 273 days since Zimbabwe hanged a condemned person. For the gruesome murder of Themba Nkiwane, the High Court sentenced Never Masina Mandlenkosi to death in 2002 and he was executed on July 22, 2005. Since then no other prisoner has been executed.

With President Mnangagwa being outspoken about the death penalty, it is not surprising that the country is a de facto abolitionist, even though it retains capital punishment in its criminal law. The country doesn't even have a hangman.

"Zimbabwe has no hangman," Mrs Virginia Mabhiza, Judiciary Services Commission (JSC) secretary told our Bulawayo Bureau. No hangman and executions in the last 17 years for Zimbabwe but the courts keep on passing death sentences as enshrined in the 2013 Constitution that was adopted following a referendum after a constitutional review process.

Currently there are 62 prisoners on death row in Zimbabwe as the country looks set to continue with its moratorium on executions. In 2013, as Justice Minister then, President Mnangagwa publicly declared his disdain for capital punishment of prisoners.

"As someone who has been on death row myself and only saved by an 'age technicality', I believe that our justice delivery system must rid itself of this odious and obnoxious provision," President Mnangagwa was quoted saying at the Harare Gardens on October 10 of that year. In a report at the ongoing 51st regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the question of the death penalty, the human rights committee states that article 6 (6) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights reaffirms the position that States parties that are not yet totally abolitionist should be on an irrevocable path towards complete eradication of the death penalty, de facto and de jure, in the foreseeable future.

The death penalty cannot be reconciled with full respect for the right to life, and abolition of the death penalty is both desirable and necessary for the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights. "Some 170 States have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice, or have suspended executions for more than 10 years.

In 2020, the General Assembly adopted resolution 75/183, in which it called upon States to establish a moratorium on executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty. In their submissions for the present report, several States described their...