The death penalty must never return
THE IFP is at it again. This party’s ongoing misguided longing for the death penalty to come back must be fought tooth and nail.
This despicable, brutal and callous form of punishment was buried, never to come back, by our Constitutional Court in 1995.
The US Supreme Court in 1976 dug a hole for that superpower when, confronted with this same issue, it delivered a split 6-5 prodeath-penalty vote, plunging them into a cul-de-sac from which they will never recover. US jails are overflowing with death-row inmates languishing under lengthy, inhumane incarceration.
The IFP must say how they and the other Mickey Mouse parties, all hoping to confuse an already gullible, fearful and ignorant electorate, intend killing thousands of people (19061 murders announced by the minister of police last year) if they are all caught, convicted and sentenced.
On top of this, there are 16000 serving life sentences.
Did they consider how long courts take to finalise just one case? Some drag on for years.
Our judicial system will always favour the wealthy and influential. Of the 4110 people hanged from 1910 to 1989, when a moratorium was placed on the death penalty, over 90% were black and coloured, and 136 were political prisoners.
Were any of these from the IFP, or were they all from the ANC or the PAC? ANC cadre Andrew Zondo was sent to the gallows by Tony Leon’s father, Ramon Leon. Some judges were known as “hanging judges”.
All parties resolved at Codesa that the death penalty should never come back to our shores. Parliament debated this issue at length, but this party, together with the ACDP, the FF+ and all the newborns, hope to gain votes by coming out publicly in favour of this scourge.
But of all of them, the DA is the most dishonest, immoral and insincere on this topic, as, as with most sensitive issues, they have no death-penalty policy at all. Heaven forbid that they ever come to power.
To call for the reintroduction of the death penalty, by itself a violent act, to an already violent country is disingenuous, mischievous, disloyal and above all extremely dangerous.