The Bill to abolish the death penalty was informed by a nationwide survey carried out by the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and development partners in April this year, which showed that the majority of people no longer want capital punishment in the country’s legal statutes.
The present Constitution in 2013 marked the half-way point,
limiting the potential use of the death penalty to aggravated murder by adult
males under the age of 70, although there have been no executions since 2005.
The Swiss Embassy and the Centre for Applied Legal Research
assisted the Ministry in conducting a nationwide survey covering all the 10
provinces with three districts being randomly selected in each province.
After the survey concluded that the majority abhor the
death penalty, a private members’ Bill has since been gazetted that seeks to
abolish the death penalty.
The Bill will now be tabled before Parliament for debate
and is expected to pass with or without amendments.
A private member’s Bill is brought to the House by an MP
who is not a Vice President, Cabinet Minister or Deputy Minister and can deal
with a variety of issues like family law, contracts, control of animals, but it
cannot impose or alter taxes or impose financial obligations on the State.
It is a Bill “for the particular interest or benefit of any
person or persons or bodies of persons as distinguished from a measure in the
general public interest”.
In an interview yesterday, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary
Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said while the Bill was being sponsored by
Dzivaresekwa MP Mr Edwin Mushoriwa, the Justice Ministry had no reservations on
it given what came out from the national survey.
“Indeed the Bill has been brought to Parliament by a
private member. In principle we have no problem with the Bill as a Government.
When it comes for debate, we will just ensure that it speaks to what we believe
in as a Government,” he said.
“It should capture what we believe as a Government and
particularly observations and recommendations that were carried out by a survey
we commissioned this year.”
Commenting on the Bill, Mr Mushoriwa said he was motivated
not only by the survey, but an observation that the poor were being sent to the
gallows for failure to hire lawyers to articulate their case in court.
“I was further motivated to push for this Bill after noting
that, only the poor who cannot afford competent lawyers end up on death row and
given the moratorium on executions in Zimbabwe for the past 17 years I noted
the mental anguish for those on death row and it’s most pronounced on their
relatives,” he said. “Death sentence was never part of our culture, but was
bought by colonialism. Our great heroine Mbuya Nehanda and other heroes of
Chimurenga wars were hanged for fighting for our freedom. If Mbuya Nehanda was
to wake up today she would be shocked that we are still having this colonial
law in our statutes. Death sentence is state murder. An eye for an eye can not
build Zimbabwe.”
According to a summary of the report, the consultations
were taken in all the provinces.
“The purpose of the consultations was to obtain people’s
views on the death penalty question to enable the Ministry to develop a
position on whether or not to recommend the abolition of the death penalty in
Zimbabwe,” reads the reports.
The consultations revolved around six questions such as
whether one has heard about death penalty, whether one feels it deterred crime
of murder, whether one would recommend it if he or she loses a close relative
from crime of murder.
Other questions were whether death penalty provided
satisfaction to aggrieved relatives and if abolished what alternative sentence
should be imposed.
“The response to these questions revealed that there are
basically two broad views to the death penalty question, those respondents who
would want death penalty to be retained and those who would want it abolished.
This probably reflects the contentiousness and complexity of the subject
matter,” reads the report.
The report said the reasons for respondents that want death
penalty abolished argued that it was ineffective as a penal sanction, went
against sanctity of life, did not cope with imperfection of the criminal
justice system and was a human rights violation.
“The death penalty question is a very emotive topic. This
is particularly so when it is discussed within a national context where there
is an increase in reported cases of murder.
“While this has an important effect of making the topic
relevant to the lived realities of the people in their various communities, it
also has a negative effect of facilitating emotive responses on a matter that
would otherwise require a balanced assessment of the issues/arguments at hand,”
read the report.
The Bill, gazetted last week, does not just want to block
future sentences of death, but proposes that all those now on death row must be
brought before the High Court for re-sentencing.
While life imprisonment might be the maximum, the High
Court will have discretion for sentence as it has in other crimes, and will be
able to take into account all the factors in aggravation and mitigation.
Once re-sentenced, the same convicts will have the right to
appeal to the Supreme Court should they be aggrieved with the new sentence, if
the Bill becomes law.
Since 2013, the Constitution protects the right to life,
but states that Parliament may pass a law that permits a court, in limited
circumstances, to impose the death penalty on men convicted of aggravated
murder.
The Bill simply wants Parliament not to pass such a law.
Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment