Zimbabwe’s Parliament said Thursday that the bill was passed by senators the night before. The death penalty will be abolished if it is signed by the president, which is likely…reports Asian Lite News
Zimbabwe’s Senate has approved a bill to abolish the death penalty, a key step in scrapping a law last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago.
Zimbabwe’s Parliament said Thursday that the bill was passed by senators the night before. The death penalty will be abolished if it is signed by the president, which is likely.
The southern African country uses hanging, and last executed someone in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner, or hangman.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s leader since 2017, has publicly spoken of his opposition to capital punishment. He has cited his own experience of being sentenced to death — which was later changed to 10 years in prison — for blowing up a train during the country’s war of independence in the 1960s. He has used presidential amnesties to commute death sentences to life in prison.
Amnesty International, which campaigns against the death penalty, urged Mnangagwa to sign the bill into law “without delay” and commute death sentences. Zimbabwe has more than 60 prisoners currently on death row.
According to Amnesty, about three-quarters of countries in the world no longer carry out the death penalty. Zimbabwe is one of more than a dozen in Africa and more than 50 across the world that have the death penalty enshrined in law without any official moratorium on it.
Amnesty International said it recorded 1,153 known executions globally in 2023, up from 883 the previous year, although countries that carried out executions declined from 20 to 16. Due to a veil of secrecy, the figures do not include those from North Korea, Vietnam and China.
China is the “world’s lead executioner” where thousands of people are believed to have been executed, Amnesty said in a report released in October.
Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for almost 90% of all executions recorded by Amnesty in 2023. The United States recorded an increase from 18 executions in 2022 to 24 in 2023. Last year, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the U.S. recorded the most executions, in that order.
Zimbabwe is among four African countries alongside Kenya, Liberia and Ghana that have recently taken “positive steps” towards abolishing the death penalty, Amnesty said.
The change was initiated by a member of the main opposition party, Citizens Coalition for Change, MP Edwin Mushoriwa, through a private member’s bill. This rarely used process was introduced before the National Assembly in November 2023. According to prescribed procedure, the National Assembly had to approve the official tabling of the bill before it could be gazetted for formal consideration. Now that the executive has signalled its backing, it is all but assured that the Zanu-PF-dominated parliament will formally adopt the bill.
The cabinet decision to abolish the death penalty should not come as a great surprise. Zimbabwe has been a de facto abolitionist state for almost two decades. Although its law still allows for the death penalty, it last executed a prisoner in 2005.
Legal reform on the death penalty often pits legislatures against public opinion. It is not entirely clear what the Zimbabwean general public’s views on the issue are. In its statement, the cabinet said grassroots consultations were conducted in 30 districts. But it does not say what the outcomes of these consultations were.
A 2018 survey found 61% of Zimbabweans supported retention of the death penalty. However, a 2020 survey of Zimbabwean opinion leaders showed strong support for abolition.
It is probably Zanu-PF’s fear of a popular push back that has stifled action towards abolition. Doing it via a private member’s bill insulates the ruling party from any potential popular backlash, to some extent. It is no coincidence that the 2023 abolition of the death penalty for ordinary crimes in Ghana also came via a private member’s bill.
While some opposition is to be expected, indications are that the general Zimbabwean public will take the government’s lead on this.
It is significant that the 2018 study also found that 80% of those favouring retention indicated that if the death penalty were to be abolished, they would accept it as government policy. The reasons for this level of support for abolition lie in the country’s “pre-colonial” culture and colonial history, as I explain below.
It is surprising that the latest decision did not come earlier. President Emmerson Mnangagwa is well known to be an opponent of the death sentence. He was sentenced to death in 1965 for sabotage by the white minority Rhodesian regime. His sentence was reduced to 10 years’ imprisonment, thanks to his youthful age of 22.
Soon after he took office, in 2018, Mnangagwa commuted to life imprisonment the sentences of inmates detained for longer than 10 years. In 2016, as vice president, he had publicly declared the death penalty an archaic imposition of British colonialism that is at odds with the values of pre-colonial Shona societies.
In Shona cosmology, murder is understood as affecting the whole community. It calls for a restorative – rather than a retributive – approach. Payment of reparations to the deceased’s family averts the wrath of an “avenging spirit”
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