A HARARE Central Prison inmate has petitioned Parliament requesting the National Assembly to enact legislation that abolishes the death penalty.
The petition was referred to the Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Speaker of the House Jacob Mudenda noted last week.
Zimbabwe remains one of three Southern African nations still upholding capital punishment.
At a time he was Vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa openly said he was against capital punishment having escaped the hangman’s noose during the liberation struggle.
In early 2017, Mnangagwa blocked recruitment of the country’s hangman after at least five people had applied for the post which fell vacant more than 10 years earlier.
According to official figures as at December 2016, there were 97 inmates on death roll with Zimbabwe’s last execution having been in 2005.
In Zimbabwe there has been no execution since 2005, but persons are still sentenced to death and there are over a dozens of prisoners languishing on “death row,” some for nearly 20 years.
Under the new Constitution, the death sentence can be handed down only to male offenders between the ages of 21 and 70 and only in cases of aggravated murder.
Right groups such as Veritas, Amnesty International Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum have in the past canvassed for signatures to petition government to take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty.
There has been widespread condemnation of the death penalty among world right groups former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s famously remarking that “The death penalty has no place in the 21st century.”
More than 160 Members States of the United Nations with a variety of legal systems, traditions, cultures and religious backgrounds, have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.
