RIGHTS-SWAZILAND: Govt Indecisive about Hanging

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Oct 11 2001 (IPS) - In Swaziland, the issue of capital punishment has again been raised following the shooting of a prominent newspaper editor.

Currently there are 18 inmates on death row awaiting their executions, some of whom were convicted over ten years ago.

But government seems reluctant to go ahead with executions for fear of drawing attention to the Kingdom’s human rights record, which was again criticised this week by outgoing U.S. ambassador Gregory Johnson.

If there was any question that the death penalty is all about revenge, the opinion expressed in a statement released as the first order of business for a new group, the Editors Forum, should remove some doubt.

The forum’s membership consists of the handful of newspaper editors at work in Swaziland, where only one newspaper, the Times of Swaziland, operates free from government ownership or control.

The views of these editors tend to be liberal. But that was before one of the group’s founders, The Swazi Observer editor Sandile Ntshakala, was murdered on Oct 2. He was gratuitously shot to death by some street thugs in an apparent thrill killing.

Despite early police assurances that suspects would soon be caught, implicated by the unusual high-calibre weapon they used to kill the editor, no arrests have been made.

The Editors Forum statement called for the immediate execution of the inmates currently on death row at the maximum security Matsapha Prison, about five kilometres from where Ntshakala was shot.

The editors argue that the executions would send a signal to Swaziland’s criminals that the public was fed up with murders.

The justice ministry has been silent about the editors’ petition, but it has taken a go-slow approach to capital punishment.

An execution has not taken place in Swaziland since 1983.

The Swaziland Law Society and the Human Rights Association of Swaziland (HUMARAS) want the death penalty abolished. They argue the death penalty does not deter crime and, as the Editors Forum’s response proves, is all about revenge.

With the abolition of the death penalty in neighbouring South Africa, opponents of capital punishment say Swaziland looks out of step with growing sentiment against executions.

The Swazi public remains convinced they want the death sentence, so much so that they submitted in majority numbers in favour of it to the Constitutional Review Commission, which is currently drafting Swaziland’s first constitution since the Independence constitution was overturned by King Sobhuza in 1973.

The commission’s initial report indicates that capital punishment must be included in a final governing document.

Church leaders of the nation’s prominent African Zionist Christian sects support the death penalty. “This is justice,” says Pastor Jabulani Dlamini from Mliba. “It is the way to fulfil the biblical injunction of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”‘

Bishop Ncamiso Ndlovu, who heads the kingdom’s Roman Catholic faith, condemns capital punishment on moral grounds. “There is always the danger of executing an innocent man, but aside from that, no one has the right to take another human life,” he says.

Opponents of the death penalty point out the real possibility of mistaken convictions. “This is a country where police detective work is so inept that the only way prosecutors can get convictions in some cases is after police beat confessions out of criminal accused,” says a Swazi attorney.

Other attorneys agree that until law enforcement becomes more competent and people are confident with the justice of all convictions, executions must be put on hold.

The last thing the Swaziland government wants is to draw attention to its human rights record. But such attention is sure to come once the first executions are performed. The country is dependent on grants and low-interest loans from nations in the Developed World that have abolished capital punishment, and which oppose the practice in other places.

“No foreign nation has ever made aid conditional to the termination of the death penalty in Swaziland,” says a source with the foreign ministry. “But a subtle pressure is there, a sort of warning not to go ahead and start hanging people.”

The 18 death row inmates complain that they are being unfairly punished for government’s indecision. They want to know the date of their executions.

In order to avoid putting anyone to death, and at the same time appease the public’s desire for executions, the justice ministry has played a delaying tactic for three years now by claiming no executions can take place because there is no executioner.

Justice Minister Maweni Simelane has said no Swazi wants the job. He says the reluctance is culturally based, a notion that has been disputed by experts on Swazi Law and Custom, and may be put to the test by year’s end when customs are formally codified in preparation for the proposed constitution.

Capital punishment in Swaziland is carried out by hanging, and government has advertised internationally for a hangman. Dozens of eager applicants have responded from all over the world, but up to today, no one has been hired. The justice ministry has apparently stopped looking.

This week, the Times of Swaziland in a comment urged government to make up its mind: either abolish the death penalty and give death row inmates life sentences, or commence with the grim task of fulfilling court judgements.