The New National Party (NNP) has challenged the Democratic Alliance (DA) to ”put their cards on the table” and state, unequivocally, what the party’s policy is on the death penalty.
NNP secretary general Daryl Swanepoel said he was not interested in being told DA policy was that their elected representatives had a free vote on the issue.
”I want to know what the DA’s policy is: are they in favour or against the death penalty, or don’t they know?” he said in a statement on Thursday.
However, later in the day, DA spokesperson Nick Clelland-Stokes rejected Swanepoel’s challenge as ”nothing but a cheap media ploy” that deflected from the real issue of South Africa’s escalating crime crisis.
The DA believed the crunch issue was that only one in ten violent crimes were ever punished by a court of law in South Africa today, he said.
In his statement, Swanepoel said: ”As secretary general of the NNP, I challenge Mr James Selfe, the executive director of the DA, to publish the DA’s policy on the death penalty.”
The DA had consistently argued against the death penalty, but ”does not have a party position” on the issue.
”The DA’s principles are not in touch with the sentiments of over 70% of South Africans, who believe the death penalty should be reinstated.”
He said the NNP had consistently argued for the death penalty.
”We are on record in the 1994 election, in the 1999 election, and now again we believe that the death penalty is necessary to curb the hideous murders and large-scale rape in this country.
”The death penalty is a necessary deterrent for this,” Swanepoel said.
Clelland-Stokes said: ”Mr Swanepoel has conveniently forgotten that it was the National Party in 1990 that stopped the death sentence operating in South Africa.”
He said many members and legislators of the DA supported the reintroduction of the death penalty for extreme cases; others did not.
”It is a matter of conscience, as it is for NNP members. All members, however, support the Constitution and the testing power of the Constitutional Court in the final instance,” he said. – Sapa