Death penalty can never be justified
THE article, “It’s time we discuss merits of the death penalty” by IFP MP Narend Singh
(POST, July 25 – 29), is crying for rebuttal.
It should not surprise anyone that this particular party would have the audacity to once again advocate something as violent and arbitrary as the death penalty.
Few parties have clean hands. How will they ever clear their names? At the ground-breaking Codesa talks parties agreed it would be best to abolish it altogether.
This bold step was rubber-stamped by our Constitutional Court in 1995 when all 11 justices ruled with a unanimous landmark 11-0 ruling that this scourge in its entirety was unconstitutional, a travesty, a violation of human rights, especially the right to life. Summed up by Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson, he said: “The right to life and dignity are the most important of all human rights.
“By committing ourselves to a society founded on the recognition of human rights we are required to value these two rights above all others. And this must be demonstrated by the State in everything that it does, including the way it punishes criminals. This is not achieved by objectifying murderers and putting them to death to serve as an example to others in the expectation that they might be deterred thereby.”
It is always amazing how low political parties can stoop to boost their wrong stances to gain votes of an already fearful, gullible and divided electorate, especially in the run-up to elections. Next year’s sixth general election will be our nation’s most crucial, makeor-break event. Therefore, this type of distortion should be fought tooth and nail.
Parties run incessantly to our over-worked courts with frivolous issues, frustrating genuine uplifting endeavours by our government to correct the wrongs of the past.
For this party to now come up with something dug up from somewhere that the “framers of the Constitution had not stated specifically that the death sentence is a competent penalty” is both disingenuous and dangerous. It makes a mockery of our struggling judicial system.
It would be helpful to remind ourselves how the socalled greatest democracy on earth, the United States, dug itself into a hole from which not even a powerful nation such as theirs would ever be able to emerge, when its highest court sanctioned the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976. There were no executions for the whole preceding decade. That court’s vote count was a devastating 6-5 split.
Did we forget how the extinct National Party, founded on a lie and a myth, screamed on posters from poles in 1994: “Hang the murderers! Hang the rapists!”
Just as the Bible verse in Proverbs 14:12, repeated in Proverbs 16:25, proclaims: “What you think is the right road may lead to death”, opposition parties will one day be shocked by the results of their evil intentions.
The DA chose the coward’s route by giving its members what is euphemistically called a “free vote” on such a sensitive issue. Fence-sitting is never the choice of those who claim to occupy the moral high -ground. Even today, this fractious party is deafeningly quiet about its so-called policy on this issue and others such as abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality etc.
One shudders to think what chaos will erupt should it succeed in securing a majority. Will it enact referendums on these issues? How divisive and destructive will that be to our brittle democracy? Heaven forbid! Not much can be said about the other Mickey Mouse parties other than to mention those that did declare their unequivocal support for the death penalty such as the Freedom Front and African Christian Democratic Party, which based their support on biblical injunction, which is again a mythical concoction.
If God Almighty ordained the death penalty, it follows that He would have broken one of His own commandments, namely the sixth: Do not commit murder.
Furthermore, the Bible is not clear about who should actually carry out executions, and in what way. Lovers of the death penalty are quick to advise it is obvious that this “divine” order should come from the church, carried out by the state. Recently, the Catholic Church, the largest grouping in the Christian fraternity, declared its total condemnation of it in its entirety.
What about other churches and institutions? All individuals should arm themselves with all facts before whipping up emotions.
The Bible mentions at least four different ways of putting people to death: crucifixion, beheading, devouring by lions and stoning. Firing squads, electrocution, gas chambers and nowadays the “humane” lethal injection, came only later as man had to devise more ingenious ways of dispatching the growing numbers of criminals, murderers, rapists, treasonists, political opponents, terrorists, gangsters, armed robbers etc.
Lovers of the death penalty will never understand that it is utterly impossible to kill so many undesirables. Our former minister of police announced in March this year that altogether 19 061 murders were committed in our country in the past year. This figure excludes rapists, armed robbers, reckless and drunk drivers also causing many deaths.
From 1910 to 1989, when the last hanging took place in Pretoria, just 4 110 people were hanged, 136 of them for political reasons like Andrew Zondo, sentenced to death by Judge Ramon Leon, father of Tony Leon, former leader of the DA, and Solomon Mahlangu. Almost 90% were African and coloured; all the judges and prosecutors were white. Extra-judicial killings were rife.
There were 453 life prisoners when the death penalty was finally abolished, growing to more than 15 000 as more and more are sentenced for grievous crimes, while the wealthy and influential can buy their freedom. Last, in Muslim-majority countries people are executed for apostasy. Minorities are inhumanely oppressed and denied basic rights, a dangerous route indeed. Our country desperately needs a Death Penalty Information Centre (DPIC) like the one in Washington. Can any sane person call for the return of such an abomination?