South Africa Ends Capital Punishment
South Africa’s highest court abolished the death penalty Tuesday, calling it unconstitutional and a form of cruel, inhuman punishment that does not appear to deter crime and cheapens the value of human life in a society already plagued by violence.
The unanimous ruling came in the first case heard by the new multiracial Constitutional Court, comparable to the U.S. Supreme Court. In February, the 11-member panel was sworn in as the first South African judicial body to be free of the parliamentary sovereignty of the apartheid era, when laws made by the racially separatist Parliament could not be disputed.
The ruling comported with the position of the African National Congress party headed by President Nelson Mandela. But it sparked immediate outcries from the National Party, led by Deputy President Frederik W. de Klerk. That party, for years, was the political vehicle of white-minority rule and now is a coalition partner in Mandela’s all-races government.
The arguments made for and against the South African death penalty parallel the debate that continues about capital punishment in the United States: whether the punishment deters violent crime, whether it is justified as a form of retribution and whether societies can afford the tremendous costs of lengthy appeals in capital cases.
Public opinion here shows strong support for the death penalty, including among members of the ANC. But the Constitutional Court president, Arthur Chaskalson, concluded that demands for retribution and unsupported arguments of deterrence cannot guide constitutional law. “By committing ourselves to a society founded on the recognition of human rights, we are required to value these rights (to life and dignity) above all others.
“And this must be demonstrated by the state in everything that it does, including the way it punishes criminals,” he said. “It has not been shown that the death sentence would be materially more effective to deter or prevent murder than the alternative sentence of life imprisonment would be.”
Death penalty foes hailed the decision as a sign of the new court’s ability to rule independently on a difficult and emotional issue. The caprice, whim and error that is said by these advocates to often enter into sentencing will no longer pose fatal consequences, they said. And they portrayed the ruling as yet another signal of South Africa’s move toward democracy.
National Party spokesman Danie Schutte said his party will try to amend the constitution so that death can be imposed as a penalty for serious crimes such as murder, rape and armed robbery.
No one has been executed in South Africa since November 1989. In February 1990, de Klerk, then president, announced a moratorium on executions at the same time that he freed Mandela from 27 years of imprisonment and lifted a ban on numerous political parities. Before the moratorium, hundreds were hanged every year.
Courts, however, have been allowed to continue imposing the death sentence, and 243 people have been sentenced to death since the moratorium was imposed. There are 453 prisoners on South African death rows. Their sentences will now be life terms.