Fresh Calls to Abolish Death Penalty in Zimbabwe

Last week saw the commemoration of the 17th annual World Day Against the Death Penalty, which was accompanied by new calls for the government to end the practice.

This year there was a great emphasis placed on children as the unseen and often forgotten victims of capital punishment, highlighting that the they are likely to suffer psychological trauma for the rest of their lives.

The campaign said that “[f]requently forgotten, children of parents sentenced to death or executed carry a heavy emotional and psychological burden that can amount to the violation of their human rights.

“This trauma can occur at any and all of the stages of the capital punishment of a parent: arrest, trial, sentencing, death row stays, execution dates, execution itself, and its aftermath.  The repeated cycles of hope and disappointment that can accompany all of these stages can have a long-term impact, occasionally well into adulthood” they continued.

The status of the death penalty in Zimbabwe is currently “abolitionist de facto”, which means that an execution has not been carried out for over 10 years.

According to the Prisons Deputy Commissioner of Human Resources Fadzayi Mupure, there were 81 people on death row as of October 2018.

Back in March of that year President Emerson Mnangagwa commuted all death sentences of those that had been on death row for over a decade to life imprisonment.

The last person to be executed in Zimbabwe was in 2005 for murder with aggravating circumstances.  It is unclear whether there is much of an appetite for the law as it currently is to be changed.