By Kielce Gussie
In July 2005, one man was executed in Zimbabwe. Convicted of murder, he was hanged for his crime.
Just shy of 20 years later, this man will forever be the last person ever to be executed in the country. On Dec 31, 2024, President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the Death Penalty Abolition Act – making Zimbabwe the 30th African nation to indefinitely end capital punishment.
A long road to abolition
Since Zimbabwe gained its independence from Great Britain in 1980, at least 79 people have been executed. But prior to this new Act, the country had two decades free of state executions, and the Secretary-General for the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Fr Tryvis Moyo, argued this was due to a social change.
There was a “shift in terms of the understanding of the concept of justice,” he explained. During this time, at least 15 African countries, including Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, abolished the death penalty.
Little by little, Zimbabwe moved towards joining its neighbors. It limited the application of the death sentence. For example, in 2013, the country’s new Constitution outlawed capital punishment for women and anyone under 21 and above 70.
Yet, it wasn’t until a number of factors aligned that the country officially became abolitionist.
Changing perspective
Fr Moyo explained that some of the factors might have included Zimbabwe’s being a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a change in government. In 2017, the then-president, Robert Mugabe, was deposed, and Emmerson Mnangagwa—a man who had been given the death sentence during the war of independence in the 1960s —took power.
The Bishops’ Conference Secretary-General emphasized that “people in the country are getting a better appreciation of the sanctity of life and the systems of justice.” As a country where 85% of the population is Christian, Fr Moyo described a growing awareness that there are many other forms of punishment beyond the death penalty, where the “sanctity of life has to be preserved.”
Leading by example
While Zimbabwe is not the first country on the African continent to abolish the death penalty, Fr Moyo argued this decision will have an effect on the remaining nations who continue to support it.
“It’s fair to say our countries tend to copy from each other and to learn from each other,” the Secretary-General pointed out, “so I think it’s leading by example.”
He highlighted that signing the Death Penalty Abolition Act is an important statement on human rights as it was a move to preserve life. “With the death penalty, there were also mistakes being made with innocent people.”
Capital punishment was sometimes used as a weapon against those who, at a certain time, seemed “to have been on the wrong side of the law.”
A future of life
Moving forward, Fr Moyo described the biggest challenge for most countries in abolishing the death penalty is an “understanding of justice and how we perceive the correctional institution.”
With capital punishment, there is no element of rehabilitation, which the Secretary-General said “gives citizens a second chance.” But shifting from the death penalty to rehabilitation requires a greater education around human rights, human dignity, and the sanctity of life.
It takes educating people on these elements to help them “understand that justice has many facets,” Fr Moyo explained. The justice system should be centered on the rehabilitation of people and, after that, he advocated, leaving “it to God to decide on human life.” – Vatican News
