OF THE DEATH PENALTY OLYMPICS AND A CHEERING DENIALIST POPULATION
(On Monday), as human rights campaigners across the world stood in unison against the death penalty, I was in court for the precise same effort. Death row, presently holds more people than it has ever held in its history.
Many of you may not know that I supported the death penalty for many years and used to be the point person for its defense on behalf of government. I was unshakeable in its defense. All invitations to the Attorney Generals Chambers for debates or addresses on the death penalty, including radio interviews, ended on my desk at the DPP. Advocate Boko, among others, knows how many times we have clashed over it as panelists at the University with me representing the government position, and him, the abolitionist movement. He knows how many times we have discussed it privately with him trying to dissuade me from it. As a state attorney I pursued the death penalty before the High Court, and defended death sentences before the Court of Appeal. But in time reality and experience overtook sentiment. I had to face the pitiless logic of facts. Naked sentiment and populism aside, the death penalty was completely indefensible.
Botswana is the only executing country in Southern Africa. The applause we received from South African blacks for hanging Ms (Mariette) Bosch, damaged our national psyche, completely. It shunted us back to a medieval psyche of savagery and sadism. To our black brothers and sisters to the South, Ms Bosch’s hanging was a vindication of their struggle. By sheer skin color, she represented the oppressor and through her, white people were getting the justice they had meted to black people for centuries. It was a message to their white brothers that the wheel had turned full circle. It had nothing to do with the crime for which she had been hanged. It was revenge on their behalf. Botswana had finally answered their, “kill the bo*r” chants.
Twenty years have come and gone since Ms. Bosch was hanged. Many more hangings have followed. The world is still the same if not worse. Botswana is the same slaughterhouse it was before her hanging. Yet many denialists still swear it works. Looking down from the afterlife, Clarence Darrow is likely exclaiming: “Why don’t you do something instead of blindly calling for blood? Why not do something different? Why not think? Why don’t you read a book?”
I once met a woman whose father had been murdered. She captured it in the most humbling way:
“The death penalty cannot give me justice,” she said. “The only justice I can ever have is to have my father back.”
I was struck by her acute insight and the simplicity of her logic even in the midst of her eternal grief.
I write today to dispel the myth that with more executions, Botswana would be better off. After nearly sixty hangings we are no better. We ought to have learnt by now that we cannot kill evil by killing men. There has to be a better way. The death penalty distracts from genuine crime fighting interventions. It’s a lazy and dumb way of dealing with the murder scourge afflicting our society. It doesn’t consult the mind, only emotion. Yet, so many still maintain it works. Politicians, realizing how popular it is, have vultured on public sentiment and reinforced the folly. Our Presidents are trying to outdo each other on how many death warrants they have signed. To them signing a death warrant is a sign of strength. Sadly, the same unfortunate scourge is sweeping through the bench. We are having death penalty Olympics with a denialist population shouting at the stands.
The day we abandon the death penalty will be the day when we can harness our collective ingenuity and strength as a nation, against crime in general and murder in particular. I hope to see that day, but even if I don’t, I know that sure as tomorrow, it shall come. I believe in my people enough to believe that they will overcome raw emotion and that in time they will refuse to stoop down to the criminality to solve crime.
MY FRIENDS; THE DEATH PENALTY HAS NOT MADE THIS COUNTRY BETTER AND NEVER WILL. IT HAS FAILED THE WORLD OVER, AND IT HAS FAILED HERE AT HOME. THE DEATH PENALTY IS A LIE