EKURHULENI BACKLASH: Death penalty: Let’s not aspire to being a bloodthirsty, barbaric nation

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> As ANC leaders revive calls to restore the death penalty, evidence shows capital punishment neither deters crime nor protects survivors from wrongful convictions.

“ANC Lives. ANC Leads” goes the slogan, much loved by party members. It is emblazoned on T-shirts, posters, pamphlets and paraphernalia distributed at conferences.

This was certainly true once upon a time, that bygone era when the party actually had something to offer the people. What came out of the mouths of the leaders was considered, and policy proposals emanating from the party had meat on the bones.

In a plural society replete with ideas, some of these utterances and proposals were contentious, but they were the kind of stuff you could work with. A far cry from the yelling populism of today.

Last week, the ANC’s deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane was trudging the streets of Ekurhuleni, where she was offering her and her party’s condolences to the families of the nine femicide victims and venting anger at this scourge blighting our country.

She empathised with the community, assured them and the country that no stone would be left unturned in the quest to track the killer or killers and also sent a message to the women of South Africa that the government was all hands on deck in the battle against gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).

Then, in remarks to the media and the gathered community members, she signalled that the ANC Women’s League would be pushing for the reopening of the debate around the death penalty and the castration of sexual offenders. Such atrocities, she said, made it necessary for South Africa to revisit this barbaric punishment that was abolished by the Constitutional Court in its first landmark judgment in 1996.

One would have thought this was just an irresponsible comment made in the heat of the moment. South Africa was in an angry mood, and she had just witnessed the raw pain wrought by the killings and seen the fear in the eyes of the female residents of Ekurhuleni.

She was angry, too, so the outburst could be understood in that context. But then ANC Women’s League secretary-general Nokuthula Nqaba was quoted by Sunday World as saying that the matter had been tabled at a special national executive committee meeting and there was unanimity about the need for the reopening of the capital punishment conversation.

Nqaba said that while they “are alive to the provisions of our Constitution and the right to life, particularly, hence we cannot just say ‘bring back the death penalty’ but rather are saying, ‘open up the debate and let the people discuss and decide’.”

Then she went into that populist tirade about criminals being the only ones who seem to enjoy the constitutionally enshrined right to life.

“So the right to life applies to perpetrators and not survivors?” she asked, echoing the typical populist line.

Now the League is seeking legal opinion on how to take this matter forward and hopes it will ultimately result in a referendum.

“…The Constitution must be put to the test; we cannot continue in this way.