ANC to review death penalty

ANC to review death penalty

A meeting of ANC national and provincial cabinet ministers and MPs on September 1 recommended a review of the organisation's policy on the death penalty. The ANC currently opposes the death penalty.

ANC MP Carl Niehaus said the call did not necessarily mean the ANC would support the death penalty. ANC national executive member Joel Netshitenshe pointed out that the Constitutional Court had ruled the death penalty unconstitutional but conceded the constitution could be amended if the ANC voted with the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party.

The NP and the far-right Freedom Front welcomed the ANC review and called on it to move quickly to make executions constitutional. Lawyers for Human Rights expressed disappointment at the decision while Amnesty International expressed dismay. "South African society cannot further be brutalised by the institutionalising of state-sanctioned murder. The death penalty is the gravest form of human rights abuse", AI said.

The Pan Africanist Congress said it was "alarmed". "A government based on principles must stand by them. By seeming to kowtow to right-wing forces the government is laying itself open to the basest opportunism", the PAC said.

From GLW issue 246