The Parliament of Zimbabwe is set to start public hearings to abolish the death penalty on Monday. The public hearings will be led by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, reported NewsDay.
The Member of Parliament for Dzivaresekwa, Edwin Mushoriwa (CCC), raised the motion for the introduction of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Bill in Parliament in 2023 and in February 2024, Cabinet agreed to abolish the death penalty for murder offences.
In 2005, Zimbabwe carried out its most recent execution, even though 62 convicted prisoners currently await their fate on death row.
The Zimbabwean Constitution upholds the death sentence, but it specifically excludes women, men under the age of 21, and men over the age of 70 from execution.
Since 1976, more than 85 nations have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while others have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Portugal was the first to abolish the death penalty for all crimes in 1976.
The global trend leans toward abolition, and opponents of capital punishment argue that it is not a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment.
However, supporters of the death penalty claim it deters potentially violent offenders who are not sufficiently restrained by the threat of imprisonment alone.
Zimbabwe’s current President, Emmerson Mnangagwa is strongly opposed to the death penalty after he reportedly avoided the hangman’s noose on a technicality during the colonial era.
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