--- title: "Death penalty: Let’s not aspire to being a bloodthirsty, barbaric nation" description: "As ANC leaders revive calls to restore the death penalty, evidence shows capital punishment neither deters crime nor protects survivors from wrongful convictions." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "EKURHULENI BACKLASH" author: "Mondli Makhanya" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/mondli-makhanya/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-22-death-penalty-lets-not-aspire-to-being-a-bloodthirsty-barbaric-nation/" published: "2026-09-22T20:49:51" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 1616 --- # Death penalty: Let’s not aspire to being a bloodthirsty, barbaric nation > As ANC leaders revive calls to restore the death penalty, evidence shows capital punishment neither deters crime nor protects survivors from wrongful convictions. By Mondli Makhanya · Published 22 September 2026, 22:49 SAST ## Key points - ANC leaders are reviving calls for the death penalty and chemical castration after the brutal killing of nine women in Ekurhuleni. - But South Africa’s Constitutional Court abolished capital punishment in 1996, declaring it cruel, inhuman and degrading — a legacy of apartheid repression. - Research shows executions do not deter crimes of passion, while wrongful convictions make the punishment irreversible. - The answer lies not in state-sanctioned killing, but in effective policing, investigations, prosecutions and accountable criminal justice — South Africa must not go backwards. ## Content “ANC Lives. ANC Leads” goes the slogan, much loved by party members. It is emblazoned on T-shirts, posters, pamphlets and paraphernalia distributed at conferences. This was certainly true once upon a time, that bygone era when the party actually had something to offer the people. What came out of the mouths of the leaders was considered, and policy proposals emanating from the party had meat on the bones. In a plural society replete with ideas, some of these utterances and proposals were contentious, but they were the kind of stuff you could work with. A far cry from the yelling populism of today. ![ANC-NGC-Day2](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/zSoaOMpUdebRcT_pWi5nF1JC1eA=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/6I1A5351_353783.jpg) *Nomvula Mokonyane, First Deputy Secretary-General of the African National Congress at the 5th National General Council of the African National Congress on 9 December 2025. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)* Last week, the ANC’s deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane was trudging the streets of Ekurhuleni, where she was offering her and her party’s condolences to the families of the nine femicide victims and venting anger at this scourge blighting our country. She empathised with the community, assured them and the country that no stone would be left unturned in the quest to track the killer or killers and also sent a message to the women of South Africa that the government was all hands on deck in the battle against gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF). Then, in remarks to the media and the gathered community members, she signalled that the ANC Women’s League would be pushing for the reopening of the debate around the death penalty and the castration of sexual offenders. Such atrocities, she said, made it necessary for South Africa to revisit this barbaric punishment that was abolished by the Constitutional Court in its first landmark judgment in 1996. One would have thought this was just an irresponsible comment made in the heat of the moment. South Africa was in an angry mood, and she had just witnessed the raw pain wrought by the killings and seen the fear in the eyes of the female residents of Ekurhuleni. ### Tabling the unthinkable She was angry, too, so the outburst could be understood in that context. But then ANC Women’s League secretary-general Nokuthula Nqaba was quoted by Sunday World as saying that the matter had been tabled at a special national executive committee meeting and there was unanimity about the need for the reopening of the capital punishment conversation. ![From left: Deputy President Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe, Secretary General Nqaba Nokuthula, President Sisisi Tolashe, Deputy Secretary-General Dina Pule and Treasurer General Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae at the African National Congress Women's League conference, 23 July 2023. (Photo: Twitter / @Myanc)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/_MseXodY6WCrl9dJ-JgDJgpvbA0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/F1vgKWNX0AAM-JT.jpeg) *ANCWL leadership: Deputy President Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe, Secretary General Nokuthula Nqaba, President Sisisi Tolashe, Deputy Secretary-General Dina Pule and Treasurer General Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae at the African National Congress Women's League conference, 23 July 2023. (Photo: Twitter / @Myanc)* Nqaba said that while they “are alive to the provisions of our Constitution and the right to life, particularly, hence we cannot just say ‘bring back the death penalty’ but rather are saying, ‘open up the debate and let the people discuss and decide’.” Then she went into that populist tirade about criminals being the only ones who seem to enjoy the constitutionally enshrined right to life. “So the right to life applies to perpetrators and not survivors?” she asked, echoing the typical populist line. Now the League is seeking legal opinion on how to take this matter forward and hopes it will ultimately result in a referendum. “…The Constitution must be put to the test; we cannot continue in this way. Let us follow due process and see how that goes, but we will be patient,” Nqaba averred. ![Ropes used to hang prisoners on show at the official launch of the Gallows Exhumation Project on 23 March 2016 at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre (Gallows Museum) in Pretoria. (Photo: Gallo Images / Beeld / Lisa Hnatowicz)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/H723GpxBzwNix-mxuEJQ9cPXoc0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/MC-Death-Ballard_3-1.jpg) *Ropes used to hang prisoners on show at the official launch of the Gallows Exhumation Project on 23 March 2016 at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre (Gallows Museum) in Pretoria. (Photo: Gallo Images / Beeld / Lisa Hnatowicz)* ### Troubling drift To have senior leaders speaking in this illiterate way about the Constitution is troubling, to say the least. They were there when the ANC led the process of drafting the interim and final Constitution, a document that gave us this democracy. It has high ideals about giving those who walk this land maximum freedoms, rights and dignity and obliging those in power to fulfil these obligations. In the Constitution, these freedoms, rights and dignity are not supposed to be concepts. The death penalty was one of the apartheid regime’s most pernicious instruments of oppression and repression. The National Party and its criminal justice system found it easy to apply it (even making it mandatory for some crimes) because it was mostly going to be black necks that would be broken by that rope. By the 1980s, this country had one of the highest rates of executions in the world, showing the glee with which the hangpaal was used by the then authorities. Between the 1960 banning of liberation movements and the beginning of the transition in 1990, 130 political prisoners were hanged. ### ‘Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment’ In fact, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and the other Rivonia trialists would also have been given the death sentence if prosecutor Percy Yutar had his way. ![Nelson Mandela (centre) during the Rivonia Trial in 1964. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sowetan Archive)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/XF6NKAGLyG75Wr94yY27MzH5xXA=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AV_00003172.jpg) *Nelson Mandela (centre) during the Rivonia Trial in 1964. (Photo: Gallo Images / Sowetan Archive)* In the historic S vs Makwanyane and Mchunu ruling in 1996, Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson wrote in the main judgment that “the death sentence has been part of South African law since the colonial era... \[It\] is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.” Stating that South Africa had committed itself to “a society founded on human rights”, Chaskalson said, “the rights to life and dignity are the most important of all human rights, and the source of all other personal rights …” ![South Africa's first chief justice, Arthur Chaskalson. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media24)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/IthsbO6a6kaytX7oM8T72uof8_0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/MC-Tues-6Sep_4.jpg) *SA’s first Chief Justice, Arthur Chaskalson. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media24)* Other judges chimed in, with Justice Tholie Madala writing that “in my rejection of the death penalty as a form of punishment, I do not intend, nor do my colleagues, to condone murder, rape, armed robbery with aggravating circumstances and those other crimes which are punishable by a sentence of death in terms of Section 277 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977. ### Capital punishment ‘no greater deterrent’ “These criminal acts are, and remain, as heinous, vicious and as reprehensible as they ever were, and do not belong in civilised society. “The death penalty is a punishment which involves so much pain and suffering that civilised society ought not to tolerate it even in spite of the present high rate of crime. And society ought to tolerate the death penalty even less when considering that it has not been proved that it has any greater deterrent effect on would-be murderers than life imprisonment.” That last part is particularly pertinent in the debate that the Women’s League and others want to resuscitate. Every time there is a spike in crime, a series of high-profile crime incidents or reports of gruesome murders, the clamour goes up. Feminists, feudalists, religious fanatics, political populists and racist right-wingers all join in one WhatsApp group to demand the return to an eye for an eye. In their myopic view, state-sanctioned murder will be the antidote to murder and sexual violence. This ignores numerous volumes of research over decades that have proven that capital punishment is not a deterrent to potential murderers or sexual offenders. ### Wrongful convictions Even in the United States, one of the few democracies where some states still carry out executions, belief in the effectiveness of capital punishment is fast declining. The decline is occurring among the general public, prosecutors and jurors. This is due to the recognition of its ineffectiveness as a deterrent, the recurrence of wrongful convictions which cannot be remedied once someone is dead, as well as the acceptance of its barbarity. A comprehensive study by the New York-based Brennan Centre for Justice found that “much psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal research sug­gests that many crim­i­nal acts are crimes of pas­sion or com­mit­ted in a heat­ed moment based only on imme­di­ate cir­cum­stances, and thus poten­tial offend­ers may not con­sid­er or weigh longer-term pos­si­bil­i­ties of pun­ish­ment and cap­ture, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” This is supported by our own crime statistics, which show that most of the 26,000 murders committed in this country were between people who knew each other and often happened in places of enjoyment or intimate spaces. No death penalty is going to deter a guy swimming in brandy on a Friday night from stabbing his drinking mate with a broken bottle. ### Back to the basics Before we jump to the end point of wanting to implement extreme retribution, let us start with the basics: building safe neighbourhoods through visible and active policing, community involvement in policing, consistent crime detection and investigation, successful prosecution and a culture of correction in the prisons. We have tons of crime prevention strategies adopted by the Cabinet, policing strategies within the SAPS, independent input by think tanks and academics and advice from friends and allies here and abroad. A post-Madlanga Commission criminal justice system should be put to work on these strategies, Parliament should up the oversight, the Chapter Nine institutions should be more aggressive in holding to account those responsible for implementation and society should not be passive after-the-fact complainers. Resorting to impossible demands for the return of the death penalty is tantamount to the proverbial emptying of one’s bladder during a vicious Cape storm. It is not going to happen. The 1996 judgment was the final word on the matter, and South Africa is never going backwards. Seeking a constitutional amendment to fix today’s governance failures is also very lazy and shortsighted – and even more so when it comes from an organisation that was once the leader of society. Let us not aspire to being a nation of bloodthirsty barbarians. **DM** [Media on Daily Maverick: "Woman safety"](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-09-22-death-penalty-lets-not-aspire-to-being-a-bloodthirsty-barbaric-nation/)