There are still at least seven prisoners facing the death penalty in the Eastern Cape, although the death penalty was finally written out of the law six years ago.
Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons legal case officer Umesh Raga said on Monday there were seven prisoners in the Umtata maximum security prison who were technically still facing the death penalty.
”They were all sentenced in the Umtata High Court — two in 1988, one in 1987, three in 1986 and one in 1992,” said Raga.
He said records indicated that at least some of the seven had appeared in court again in 2000, presumably as the process to convert their sentences started.
This process does not appear to have been completed yet.
Raga said the responsibility for processing the cases lay with the Department of Justice and the Legal Aid Board.
Countrywide, there are still believed to be dozens of prisoners who were sentenced to death before the abolition of the death penalty in 1995, who are still waiting for their sentences to be commuted. Details of how far these cases are in being commuted are sketchy.
The Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons’ Gideon Morris said the statistics were not reliable because in some cases the sentences had been converted but the prisoners had not been informed.
He said all those still under the death sentence would be held in maximum security prisons.
”There are 108 in 243 prisons countrywide. These people are scattered throughout these prisons,” said Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Maupi Monyemangene.
Monyemangene said he did not have details of which prisoners faced the death penalty or where they were being held.
”It’s statistics that we really don’t have to keep because the sentences will be converted eventually. It’s just an administrative glitch.”
He said it was the Department of Justice’s job to convert the death sentences to life imprisonment.
”We are simply custodians,” said Monyemangene.
The Justice Department did not have further details.
”We are dealing with the cases one by one,” said Department of Justice spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago.
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) said the process of commuting the death sentences to alternatives such as life imprisonment needed to be speeded up.
”There’s absolutely no reason why a person under the death sentence cannot have their sentence revisited,” said LHR spokesperson Louis van der Merwe.
”To keep a person for an indefinite period of detention just because he was sentenced to death is cruel and inhuman punishment.”
Van der Merwe said he did not have details of which prisons the prisoners were being held in.
He said some whose cases had gone through the entire appeal process, including failed appeals for clemency from the State president, had been sentenced to death 15 or 16 years ago.
Each case would have to be dealt with individually.
”That case has to go back to the court of origin and preferably to the same judge.”
The last execution was in 1989, before the government ordered a moratorium.
The death penalty was abolished on June 6, 1995, when the Constitutional Court found that it was inconsistent with the new Constitution. At the time, Sapa reported that there were 453 prisoners on death row.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed in December 1997, finally removing the death penalty from the statute book and setting out the process for converting existing death sentences. This legislation was made effective from 1998.
In November 2002, the South African Human Rights Commission reported that there were still 133 people on death row, 17 of them in the Eastern Cape, waiting to have their sentences commuted. – Sapa