Ann Eveleth
CAUGHT between the rock of its abolitionist principles and the hard place of a constituency ravaged by crime and clamouring for revenge, the African National Congress seized control of the death penalty debate this week.
A recommendation from the ANC’s crime summit last weekend asked its leadership to “consider reconsidering” its long-standing opposition to the death penalty. Senior ANC MP Carl Niehaus moved quickly this week to “clarify” the resolution as little more than a recommendation to the ANC’s National Executive Committee to “consider whether we need to re-examine our position”, but added that a “positive outcome of the debate could be a move to restate the ANC’s arguments against the death penalty”.
Niehaus noted that “once the initial hype settled down, there has subsequently begun to be a serious debate on the issue”.
In sharp contrast to the recent focus on opposition campaigns for the reopening of the gallows, most major newspapers this week rallied behind the hard- won campaign which closed the door on executions last year. Human rights groups rallied behind their sacred principle, and the ANC’s most vocal abolitionists dusted off their ammunition to launch a counter-offensive against “knee-jerk responses to crime”.
Lawyers for Human Rights registered its “disappointment” at the ANC’s call to reconsider: “It is difficult to imagine how the reintroduction of the death penalty will in any way assist the police, the justice system or the penal sytem in dealing with crime,” said LHR national director Jody Kollapen.
Amnesty International expressed dismay at the possible volte face: “South African society cannot be further brutalised by institutionalising state- sanctioned murder. The death penalty is the gravest form of human rights abuse, and the ANC should not be deterred from its course of human rights.”
A recent Amnesty report on the death penalty suggested South Africa would be bucking the global trend away from capital punishment if it reversed the current status quo: 100 countries worldwide have either outlawed the death penalty or have not used it since 1985. Only four countries have reintroduced the death penalty in the past decade of these four, Nepal has since reabolished it and The Gambia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines have not used it.
The ANC’s most celebrated death row survivor, Magoo’s bar bomber and Deputy Director of Foreign Affairs Robert McBride, rallied behind the party’s abolitionist stance, saying pro-hanging arguments represented a “jump in logic” for communities reeling from the crime wave. “I’ve never come across a death row prisoner who thought at the time he committed the crime that he’d be hanged. Even in the heydey of apartheid, when they were hanging 167 people a year, crime skyrocketed. The real problem is that criminals know they won’t be caught,” McBride said.
Other ANC leaders argued that the death penalty provided no solution to the crime wave. “There’s no proof that it acts as a deterrent even in developing countries unless you’re talking about an authoritarian society,” said ANC MP Blade Nzimande.
ANC justice committee chair Johnny de Lange said the debate had diverted attention from the “real issue of the transformation of the justice system” which the party had begun to tackle at the summit.
Despite the summit’s decision to “acknowledge” the public outcry in favour of hanging including public opinion polls placing support for hanging at about 70% and indicating substantial ANC grassroots support for the death penalty ANC leaders this week swiftly countered opposition calls for a referendum on the issue.
The National Party, Inkatha Freedom Party, Freedom Front and some Democratic Party leaders said they were in favour of a test of the electorate, but ANC leaders stood firm in their belief that “some issues cannot be subjected to the vagaries of public opinion”.
Nzimande said: “If we were to hold a referendum on every contentious issue, this country would be nowhere. If we had subjected the Government of National Unity to a referendum, it would never have been accepted.”
McBride argued there were other equally contentious issues, like land reform, over which nobody demanded referendums: “If we called a vote on land reform, most people would demand the immediate return of land that was taken from them under apartheid.”
Provincial and Constitutional Affairs Ministry spokesman Mpho Mosimane warned that any attempt to chip away at the human rights culture enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights could have a “ripple effect” on other rights. A return to the death penalty would require the removal or amendment of the right to life clause in the Bill of Rights, but “other rights, such a abortion, may also be affected”.
‘If we were to hold a referendum on every contentious issue, this country would be nowhere’