‘Bring back the death penalty,” seems to be a popular slogan ahead of the April vote.
So what is wrong with this, especially if there appears to be enough voters who would gladly place their crosses next to the candidate who promises to return the noose if he or she is elected?
Nothing.
Nothing if we think that it is okay for those who contest political power to do so on the ticket that they will reduce the human rights we already have if they get to power. In this case, the right to life, which the Constitution says all people enjoy without qualification.
The slippery slope starts when political parties think that the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, should be made as pliable as possible for as long as that flexibility appears to curry favour with the voting public.
The scrapping of the death penalty, as it appears to need repeating ad nauseam, was a judicial and not a political decision.
Parties that seem to ignore this matter are normally the ones whose clamour is the loudest when they believe that the government appears to be “interfering with the judiciary”.
I am all for a vibrant society that debates all issues, but I am wary of politicians who seem to think that the right to life can be traded when politically expedient.
Those parties who argue for its reintroduction or for a referendum on the issue will never dare suggest that a plebiscite be held to determine whether a president should have more than two terms of office.
Some of these parties are unashamedly feeding on all our intolerance of high crime levels, without coming with creative solutions to the scourge.
“Mense is gatvol [people are tired].” The leader of the Pro-Death Penalty Party, Pieter du Toit, told the five of us who attended the launch of his party on the East Rand recently.
You are damn right, Mr Premier-of-Gauteng wannabe. We are gatvol of politicians who latch on to the base sentiments each time they think it will increase the number of votes.
Pastor Steve Leich, who, if things go according to plan, will take up the third (of the five seats) the party hopes to gain, encapsulates how badly things have become in Gauteng. “People can no longer walk their dogs down the streets,” he says.
For that we should return the hangman from his retirement?
These politicians could do well to follow the example of Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who recently pledged that he will never sign a death warrant for as long as he is president.
It must have taken extraordinary political courage for a president who, like his South African counterpart, presides over a country ravaged by crime and where the calls for the death penalty are recurrent.
Zambian churches and human rights activists have praised Mwanawasa for his pledge but have asked him to go one step further and abolish capital punishment.
Perhaps South African churches, with their enormous moral stature, should also get into the act and remind politicians that the struggle that spawned the 10 years of democracy we are now celebrating, was essentially for the restoration of our human dignity.
As the Constitutional Court held, the state has the responsibility to demonstrate its commitment to rights enshrined in the Constitution in everything that it does, including the way it punishes criminals.
“This is not achieved by objectifying murderers and putting them to death to serve as an example to others in the expectation that they might possibly be deterred.”
Politicians who are prepared to look the other way when those tasked with demystifying difficult concepts such as “everyone has a right to life”, do not differ much with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe who has in the past ridden roughshod over judgements he did not like.
In fact, the way politicians have handled the death penalty debate, reminds one about why it was such a good idea to leave the matter to judges. At least judges appear to be more consistent than politicians in keeping to a principle, hence the stature of precedents in law.
Today, those leaders who claimed to hold Christian or liberal principles and were opposed to “evils” such as the armed struggle, are the ones calling for the state to execute miscreants.
On the other hand, it is those parties who mobilised their supporters along lines such as “Freedom or Death”, “Victory is Certain”, “Kill A Cop a Day and Advance the Revolution”, “Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer” that are now the strongest opponents of the death penalty.