Zimbabwe Abolishes the Death Penalty
Good news
On 31December 2024, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the Death Penalty Abolition Bill into law.
The Bill was passed by the Senate on 12 December 2024, over a year after the first bill for abolition had been introduced in parliament. Civil society in the country, led by organizations such as Amnesty International Zimbabwe and Veritas, has been very active since then to ensure that the bill would gather enough support.
The Death Penalty Abolition Act (2024) not only abolishes the death penalty for all crimes, but it also allows all sixty or so people on death row to be resentenced. Article 2 (c) states: “no sentence of death, whenever imposed, shall be carried out.” The last execution in Zimbabwe took place in 2005.
However, Amnesty International pointed out that “a new provision in the Defence Act introduced by the Death Penalty Abolition Act, 2024 allows for the reinstatement of the death penalty when any state of public emergency is declared in terms of section 113 of the Constitution” and called for its removal.
In 2018 and 2020, The Death Penalty Project and Veritas commissioned research studies on attitudes to the death penalty in Zimbabwe which concluded that supporters of the death penalty would accept the decision to abolish as government policy and that 90% of Zimbabwean opinion leaders were in favour of abolition.
Full Death Penalty Abolition Act available on Veritas’ Website.
For more information:
Categories
Zimbabwe
