AFRICANEWS

Africa

Should we murder the murderers?

Human rights

Does the death penaltyguarantee justice and peace for the victim and perpetrator? And does it also mean the end of violence? Our correspondent examines the issue.

The media has followed Swaziland's search for a hangman or hangwoman rather closely. Although the job was never formally advertised, over 200 applications were received. A BBC reporter in South Africagavenear hilarious reports ofSwazi convicts living because of a lack of a hangman. And according to Nairobi'sDaily Nation of November 6 Swaziland's Justice ministry has now decided to hirea parttime hangperson.

It is a known fact that convicts of capital offenses in most parts of Africa, and the world in general, have not been as "fortunate" as their Swazi counterparts. For at the same time as Swaziland was searching for an executioner, 24 people who had been convicted of various treasonable crimes in Sierra Leone during that country'sjust ended military rule, were executed by firing squad on October 19. But that has not meant the triumph of peace in that country.

Thus as many people in the continent are now asking themselves, do we have a right to murder murderers? Are there any positive gains in employing capital punishment? For in Africa, death penalty is widely used withexception beingSouth Africa.

But as these questions continue to pop, several arguments are also being advanced in support of the punishment, with the most widely accepted argument being that thesociety has a duty to protect its people against injury or death. Hence the reason why we havedeath as a form of punishment. In other words, it is morally justifiable to injure a few for the sake of the majority.

Secondly, given the gravity of the death, it is hoped that the fear of losing one's life would serve as a deterrent to potential offenders. Thirdly, that there are crimes the merit death. In other words, doers of criminal acts like murders' are beyond reform. They offer neither themselves or society any hope. And in such circumstances the offender deserves to die for the good of the living so the argument goes.

People have begun to question our legally laden perception of justice and whether we, as human beings. have the right to take the life of another human being especially when we believe that right to life is the prerogative of God ?. Our definitions and perceptions of justice excludes victims in the search for justice as well as possible reformation of an offender. But the bitter fact is that, the death penalty is in a sense a literal application of the Judaic `an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," philosophy, and therefore scarcely takes into account the humanising and liberating justice as taught by Christianity.

And given the lack of transparency in our judicial systems in Africa, is there not a high likelihood that innocent people will be found guilty and hanged? In western countries where transparency is higher than in Africa there are however numerous cases where, due to "circumstantial evidence," innocent people have been sent to the electric chair. Indeed the proclamation of guilty is a merely highly technical affair, for the factors that send people to death may be quite extraneous to the crime in question.

It is also commonly assumed that victims of capital crimes would heal when offenders are executed. But studies showthe contrary. After a period of anger and trauma most victims hardly want the offenders killed for it may even cause further trauma. In cases of murder, some victims are further traumatised when they are made to feel that the lives of their beloved ones was equal to that of the criminal.In fact some of thepeople who have lost their loved ones feel that the people they lost would not agree that the state should kill "on their behalf, " through another murder.

Howard Zehr in his book, In Changing Lenses: A New Focus on Crime and Justice, correctly points out that studies in capital punishment, show that thispenalty actually fertilizes that circle of violence for "the message that potential offenders receive is not that killing is wrong but that those who wrong us deserve to die." And it this obsession with violence and revengewhich made Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr see them as a "form of sickness of the soul."

The issue of whether the penalty is discriminative has also been raised. In an article,"The Death Penalty in the United States: Ten Reasons to Oppose it," Mary Meehan argues that the practice of the death penalty is economically biased. According to her, this means that it is applied discriminatorily in regard to the rich and the poor. Indeed it seems that the poor and marginalised mostly face death than theirwell-to-do counterparts. It is also not unreasonable to say that thesentence has been abused by the ruling classes seekingto protect themselves and their properties.

Notwithstanding these arguments, the bottom line is that life is God given and that fellow human beings have no right to take it. The practice of absolute violence by the state in most casesinfluences the people's ways of dealing with conflicts in their personal lives, since already they have beenled to believe that the best way to respond to violence is through violence.

History teaches us that peace is never achieved through violence. Alternatives must be sought. For ifwecontinue killing criminalswe may not be better than them.

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