A crime wave will lead to calls for blood, just as some silly piece of provocative art will bring calls for censorship, and some foolish action by a single female will bring calls to withhold rights from all women. But the whole purpose of a Bill of Rights is to immunise certain basic human rights from the vicissitudes of public opinion or the opportunism of politicians. The last thing we want is to start hanging people, censoring art or persecuting women because a politician can gain some votes, or because loud and well-organised pressure groups put pressure on those politicians.
But the African National Congress’s agreement to reconsider the death penalty to deal with the current crime wave does highlight a central dilemma for its leaders: the fact that on many issues the party is well ahead of the constituency that voted it in. So the party is led by staunch abolitionists who are also by-and-large populists uncomfortable with the notion that they should ignore a call from voters to start stringing up criminals.
It is an unusual situation — a mass, broad-church party which happens to embrace a whole range of progressive social values, from support for a women’s right to choose abortion to opposition to capital punishment. But it is a healthy mix, one that has put us in the forefront of international human rights law.
And the fact of the matter is that the unusual history of the ANC as a political party is that it is led by people who came not through the traditional political route, but through the struggles of the streets and prisons of the 1980s. The social issues around matters such as abortion and the death penalty are very dear to these activists. The party would be torn apart by any attempt to move away from these values.
Which makes us wonder why the issue has been opened up again. It can only distract from the need to develop an effective approach to the crime problem with a realistic time-frame and an achievable set of goals. Why is the talking point, one must ask, the question of hanging criminals rather than the ineffectiveness of the police force? Why is the national commissioner of police campaigning for the death penalty, rather than focusing on the corruption in his own force that is at the root of the crime problem?