Over 50 Zimbabwean job-seekers have applied for the hangman's post which had
remained vacant since 2005, a top official in the Justice ministry has said.
Justice ministry secretary Virginia Mabhiza said her office would soon go
through the applications, but would not give a timeline as to when the
appointment will be made.
"The response has been overwhelming and the applications have been from both
men and women interested in taking up the position of hangman. We have received
over 50 applications in the past few months.
"People are very interested," Mabhiza said yesterday.
Zimbabwe last executed a prisoner on death row in 2005 and international rights
lobby group Amnesty International has applauded the country for the "10-year
hiatus", urging authorities to declare an official moratorium on the death
penalty.
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the immediate past Justice minister, has
consistently declared Zimbabwe would not implement the death penalty "under my
watch".
Mnangagwa, who survived the hangman's noose at the height of the liberation
struggle, said he had raised his opposition to capital punishment with
President Robert Mugabe.
According to Mabhiza, the country has 92 people on death row, but the absence
of the hangman has stalled their execution.
Asked whether it would not be complicated to apply the death penalty in
Zimbabwe given constitutional provisions that protect teenagers, women and all
those beyond 70 years from capital punishment, Mabhiza said the provision was a
step towards abolition.
"Moving in the right direction"
"We should not look at it as discriminatory, but as part of steps that we have
taken as a country towards abolition. But as things stand all people who fall
in the category not protected by the Constitution can be hanged.
"This means all men between 18 and 69 years and have been convicted of murder
in aggravated circumstances can receive capital punishment," she said.
"Remember under the previous dispensation, we had 7 categories of people who
could be hanged, but now we are left with 1. We are moving in the right
direction as far as abolition is concerned".
Government sources claim Mnangagwa's successor, former Central Intelligence
Organisation boss Happyton Bonyongwe, is also against the death penalty.
"The indication is that he is also against the death penalty. We will wait and
see how things move, but he has indicated that he is in support of abolition of
capital punishment," said a source.
Mabhiza would not be drawn into commending on Bonyongwe's position.
"He is still new to the ministry and we are still to hear his position," she
said.
Source: newsday.co.zw, October 17, 2017
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
