South African abolitionists just found an unlikely ally, reports David Beresford
OPPONENTS of capital punishment have found a powerful new ally: the country’s police chief, George Fivaz, who has seen the light … not on the road to Damascus, but in Denmark.
The possibility that capital punishment – outlawed by the Constitutional Court – will once again become a live political issue was raised this week by the ambiguous stand on the issue taken in the first draft of the final Constitution. But if the debate is to start again, the country’s leading law enforcement officer will be on the side of the status quo.
Fivaz disclosed his Damascene conversion this week. A year ago, he told a briefing of foreign journalists, he would have supported calls to bring back hangings. But since then, on a visit to Denmark, he had been given research findings which had converted him to the abolitionist cause.
“It is a very, very comprehensive study on the death penalty,” said the commissioner. “When you study this document you find there is no scientific proof anywhere in the world showing that the death penalty is a deterrent.” There was no reason to believe the reintroduction of capital punishment would reduce serious crime in South Africa, “because there is no connection between the two”.
Fivaz said that the only way to tackle crime was “to work on the culture of society in South Africa. Unfortunately, it is a long-term solution. We will have to start at the schools level and go to work altering the mind-sets of people. But the introduction of the death penalty, to my mind, is not going to solve our problems.”
The report referred to by the commissioner was a 1989 report on capital punishment by Amnesty International. The report says: “Nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty has any special power to reduce crime or political violence. In country after country it is used disproportionately against the poor or against racial or ethnic minorities. It is often used as a tool of political repression. It is imposed and inflicted arbitrarily. It is an irrevocable punishment resulting inevitably in the execution of people innocent of any crime. It is in violation of fundamental human rights.”
Amnesty International noted that a UN survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide had concluded that there was “no scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Such proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. The evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis”.
The human rights organisation added: “Every society seeks protection from crime. Far from being a solution, the death penalty gives the erroneous impression that ‘firm measures’ are being taken against crime. It diverts attention from the more complex measures which are really needed.”