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SOCIAL CONDIT.
President Mwanawasa sparks debate over the death penalty
Debate over the death penalty has once again taken centre-stage in Zambia, with President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa refusing to sign warrants for the execution of convicts presently under sentence of death. Zambia’s Home Affairs Minister, Lieutenant-General Shikapwasha says: «The President has given me written instructions that all those on death row should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment». Among those under sentence of death and who will benefit from President Mwanawasa’s commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment, are the 59 Zambian soldiers who were sentenced to death for an attempted military coup against the government of former president Frederick Chiluba. They are detained at the Mukobeko Maximum Prison in Kabwe, Central Zambia.
While President Mwanawasa, a Baptist, appears to favour life imprisonment to the death penalty, his new Vice-President, Pastor Nevers Mumba, a Pentecostal in the Victory Ministries, holds a contrary view regarding its abolition. Before his appointment on 28 May 2003, Mumba, former president of the opposition National Citizens Coalition (NCC), said the government had God’s authority to carry out the death penalty, and that sentence must be maintained as a deterrent to heinous crimes.
Calls for abolishing the death penalty
Opposing Mumba are many human rights activists and lawyers who contend that the death penalty should be abolished, as it is clearly opposed to the right to life enshrined in Zambia’s Constitution and the declaration that Zambia is a Christian nation. They maintain that the «the death penalty is inhuman, cruel and degrading and that it must be replaced by a humane punishment for people who commit heinous crimes.»
The issue is due to be presented to the Constitution Review Commission (CRC) but a centre of interest will be the Catholic Church’s position which has for a long time been to the forefront for the abolition of the death penalty. In 2000, the Catholic Church, through the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), mounted a vigorous campaign against the death penalty via radio and television call-in-programmes, plus a national conference on the death penalty in Lusaka’s Mulungushi International Conference Centre. Since then, there’s been a lull in the debate over the death penalty, that’s to say, until President Mwanawasa resurrected it as part of the terms of reference for public submissions to the CRC for the enactment of the new Zambian Constitution.
President Mwanawasa, who is himself a prominent lawyer, has given the people the rare opportunity to examine and recommend whether the death penalty should be maintained or abolished by the new Constitution. The present Constitutional validity of the death penalty is provided for under Section 24 of the Penal Code. But there is a problem, as legal experts argue that while the right to life in Zambia is on the one hand enshrined in the Constitution, there are so many exceptions made to this right elsewhere, that its value is severely diluted.
The CCJP
The CCJP gladly welcomes President Mwanawasa’s unprecedented move to review this constitutional conflict on the death penalty. It’s programme officer, Mr. Joseph Kalunga Banda, says: The CCJP has not gone back or changed its position on the abolition of the death penalty. We are still very much concerned about the violation to human life and respect that accompanies these executions. We intend to continue campaigning strongly for people to support the abolition of the death sentence through their submissions to the CRC. We also want to collate information obtained from our past radio/TV programmes and through our research. We will then prepare a position paper on the death penalty to be submitted to the Legal Affairs Minister, Mr George Kunda, for consideration. We will continue to debate with the government as there is this opportunity via the CRC. We call on the government to ratify the Second Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which supports the abolition of the death penalty.»
Father Clive Dillon-Mallone is a senior lecturer at the University of Zambia. He has produced a document entitled; «The Teaching of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty». In his conclusion, Father Dillon-Mallone says: «Today, the Catholic Church has come to a clear understanding of its position on capital punishment in the light of its interpretation of Scripture and the on-going tradition of its social moral teaching. The weight of the Church’s teaching is against capital punishment as indeed is the growing public opinion around the world reflected in the abolition of the death penalty in over hundred countries. There has been a growing religious sensitivity and humanitarian consciousness, that calls for the rejection of the State’s right to take the life of anyone as a punishment for crimes such as murder, treason, rape, etc, no matter how heinous the crime may be. The preservation of human life from conception to the moment of unavoidable death, may well be seen by many as an ideal that cannot easily be implemented. Nonetheless, it is an ideal which the Catholic Church believes is not only worth striving for, but one which has numerous practical implications for the common good and for the manner in which human life is understood and treated.»
Those opting for the retention of capital punishment would do well to take note of the above!