This comes as the Private Member’s Bill to abolish the
death penalty in Zimbabwe on Tuesday received Cabinet backing, basically
assuring that it will be passed by Parliament, with life imprisonment now
becoming the maximum sentence for aggravated murder.
Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister
Dr Jenfan Muswere said after the Cabinet meeting that while approving the Bill
to abolish the death penalty, Cabinet still wanted the new law to impose
lengthy sentences to deter murder. It was agreed that the circumstances that
attracted the death penalty in the past, where the murder was committed against
a prison or police officer, or a minor or pregnant woman, or was committed in
the course of other serious crimes or where there was pre-meditation, then a
suitable severe penalty was needed.
“In view of the need to retain the deterrent element in
sentencing murderers, it is expected that the new law will impose lengthy
sentences without violating the right to life,” said Minister Muswere. In
Zimbabwe, women, persons under the age of 21 and people over 70 years cannot be
sentenced to death at present.
But there has been a moratorium on execution since 2005 after the execution
of Stephen Chidhumo and Edgar Masendeke, but legally a High Court judge can
impose the death penalty on men found guilty of aggravated murder.
However, Presidential clemency orders have been commuting
such sentences to life imprisonment for some years now. Speaking at the death
penalty workshop organised by Amnesty International in Harare yesterday,
Dzivaresekwa legislator and member of the Parliamentary Legal Committee Mr
Edwin Mushoriwa said Zimbabwe was moving towards the abolition of the death
penalty.
“The majority of our people want death penalty to be
abolished,” Mr Mushoriwa said.
“More than 63 inmates who are currently on death row are
likely to survive should the death sentence be abolished in Zimbabwe. The
process of spending more than 20 years in prison is more punitive than a death
sentence.
“We need to make sure that we respect the right to life and
our hope is that this Bill will pass through. I am very confident that by the
end of this year Zimbabwe will be one of the countries that would have
abolished the death penalty in its statutes.”
Amnesty International campaigns officer Ms Lucy Chivasa
said the death penalty was the ultimate, cruel, inhumane and degrading
punishment.
“Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all
cases without exception regardless of who is accused, the nature of
circumstances of the crime, guilt or innocence or method of execution,” she
said.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the
background to the abolition of the death penalty as it speaks to the right to
life. Articles 3 and 5 say no one should be subjected to torture and inhumane
treatment.
“The death penalty is not an issue of public opinion
because some people do not know about it. We are confident and we know that
death penalty is not about public opinion but political will.”
Prisoners on death row will be resentenced by the High
Court and can appeal to the Supreme Court against their new sentences and are
allowed to apply to the President for clemency under Section 112 of the
Constitution.
Zimbabwe as an independent nation was wary of the death
penalty from the beginning and had dumped and replaced a multitude of colonial
laws with hanging clauses, even the option of a death penalty for some ordinary
crimes, leaving a death sentence only for murder without extenuating
circumstances.
Hanging required a positive decision by a Cabinet majority
under the 1980 Constitution, and it became apparent during the 1990s that there
was a growing abhorrence of implementing that sentence.
This saw the growing number of Presidential clemency orders
substituting sentences of life imprisonment, a procedure that has now been
routine for a long time. Herald
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