Opposition parties, desperate for a popular cause on which to challenge the African National Congress and looking anxiously over their right shoulders at each other, have exhumed the death penalty as an issue in this election. As our cartoonist, Zapiro, highlighted last week, self-proclaimed liberal Tony Leon has now joined the abysmal ranks of the New National Party, African Christian Democratic Party, Freedom Front and Death Penalty Party in voicing support for the noose.
It is worth reiterating some of the arguments used by the Constitutional Court in striking down the death penalty nearly 10 years ago. It based its decision on not one but three separate clauses in the Bill of Rights — the right to life, the right to dignity and the right to be free of cruel, degrading and unusual punishment.
The right-minded South Africans who so enthusiastically endorse capital punishment would do well to read the gruesome account, presented by surgeon Chris Barnard to the judges, of what actually takes place when a human being is hanged. Because executions carried out in other countries now happen discreetly behind prison walls, the hanging lobby is shielded from the bloody consequences of its views.
It is often pointed out that Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Thabo Mbeki’s father, Govan, narrowly escaped execution. Indeed, apartheid South Africa upheld the death sentence for such a wide range of political and other offences that if judges had not contrived to sidestep it, the country would have become a judicial slaughter-factory — principally for black offenders. It is no accident that Zimbabwe, which has no respect for its citizens, is a hanging state.
Constitutional Court president Arthur Chaskalson also made much of the fact that death is different from other sentences — it is irreversible, meaning that there can be no redress in the event of judicial error. The horrific execution of Timothy Evans, wrongly convicted of murder, played a key role in Britain’s abolition of the death penalty in the 1960s.
Of the substantive arguments, perhaps the most important is the fact that no conclusive evidence has been presented to show that capital punishment is a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment. What Judge Chaskalson said in his judgement is plain common sense — the best deterrent is the strong probability of being caught, tried and convicted. The way to deter violent crime in South Africa is to tackle the socio-economic conditions that feed it, and to upgrade and streamline the law-enforcement and justice systems.
Over and above the standard arguments, there is a specific point to be made about South Africa’s constitutional order. Thanks to the political revolution of the early 1990s, we are now a state in which the Constitution is sovereign. The root concept is that certain constitutional values are so fundamental that they should not be vulnerable to temporary majorities in Parliament. Opinion surveys indicate that the great majority of South Africans favour the death penalty. But because South Africa is a constitutional state, it is perfectly acceptable and democratic to resist such pressures.
By calling for a popular referendum on capital punishment opposition parties representing racial minorities are playing with fire. The Constitution protects minorities in a variety of ways. Would they also favour plebiscites on land rights, the redistribution of wealth and amnesty for apartheid atrocities?
Message from Madrid
A year after Saddam Hussein was toppled, Iraq is drenched in as much blood as it was under the dictator. Two years after the Taliban were routed, Afghanistan is as far from being a stable, democratic state as it was before the fundamentalists brought some stability through terror to the heart of Asia.
And now, with the War on Terror a fact of life, the world is not one bit safer than it was on September 11 2001. Al-Qaeda may have lost many members and its efficacy may have been disrupted by the relentless pursuit of its leaders, but the terror has not stopped.
Nor will it. The more al-Qaeda and the states accused of supporting it are bashed by Uncle Sam’s coalition in ways that do not respect multilateral and basic human values, the more al-Qaedas will be spawned.
Already a group that represents itself as an offshoot of al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the carnage in Madrid. The group’s claim has yet to be proved, but that hardly changes the equation: out there, right now, perhaps 30 groups sharing al-Qaeda’s methods are pursuing its aims. After a breather at the end of the Cold War, terror is again prime currency in the marketplace of political contestation.
Terror will not be stemmed by counter-terror. As underlined by the huge bomb explosion in Baghdad on Wednesday, a year after the Iraq war ended, George Bush’s securocratic response has failed and will continue to fail. Political, rights-based answers need to be found, particularly in that crucible of so much world conflict, the Middle East.
Spain’s voters have taken the first step by ousting a government that dragged them into a war they did not want.