This is the third instalment on a series of articles on ‘Sancity of Human life’. In this edition, we round off the topic with capital punishment.
Capital punishment is an issue almost as old as humanity, and over the years it has proved to be divisive. In southern Africa, the controversies surrounding capital punishment have been exacerbated in recent years by an increase in violent crimes. Victims of violent crimes in countries like South Africa and Namibia where capital punishment has been abolished have raised the calling for its reinstatement.
Capital punishment takes many forms. In Botswana and Zimbabwe people are hanged. In other countries they are executed through lethal injection, shooting, strangulation and decapitation. Proponents of the death penalty often base their argument on the theology of retribution, which maintains that every person must pay for his or her guilt.
When someone commits murder, he or she must expiate for it through his or her own life. Another argument used in supporting capital punishment is that it serves as a deterrent. Capital punishment sends the message to a potential rapist, murderer, arsonist, etc. that the law will deal severely with them.
As a deterrent, capital punishment frightens people away from committing acts of crime. The death penalty becomes a mechanism by which society protects itself.
Just as we cannot expect a person to sit by and do nothing when he or she is under attack, society, too, must defend itself against people who commit capital crimes.
The arguments against the death penalty are equally emotive and compelling. Whereas the theological starting point for proponents is retribution, those who oppose the death penalty start from the fact that life is sacred.
As demonstrated earlier, biblical theology attests to the fact that a human being has been created by God and in the image of God and the African belief system attests to the sacredness of life through the ancestors. This makes life sacred and, as such, is not to be violated. The characteristic view of the Christian faith is that all humans have fallen and are far from God. We seek redemption rather than the sinner’s destruction. Another argument of those who are against the death penalty is that there is no proof that it is actually a deterrent. There isn’t any indication that countries who still maintain capital punishment on their statutes have had any reduction in crime. On the contrary, it seems to encourage a culture of violence.
Recently, it has become apparent that people who are sent for execution under the death penalty are poor. For example, in the USA, the majority of inmates on death row are African Americans. It is the people who do not have the resources to defend themselves who often end up being sentenced to death. So, the concept of the death penalty becomes a justice issue.
If we ask the question who are the likely people to be at the receiving end of capital punishment, the answer would most certainly be the poor, black people, women, emotionally unbalanced people or the marginalised like the Basarwa/the San. Cases in which the middle class or well-to-do people face the death penalty are rare.
In Botswana, the Marietta Bosch case does represent this latter scenario and, because of her status, imposing the death penalty raised an unprecedented furore.
In maintaining and using the death penalty, the State, some believe, reduces itself to the level of a criminal. It violates life just as the criminal has done and raises questions like,
Who in this instance is the criminal?
Does anyone have the right to kill at all?
Do two wrongs make a right?
Another danger in the use of capital punishment is its finality. There have been cases where people have been executed and then later it was discovered they were actually innocent of the crime they were convicted of.
Opponents of capital punishment see it as an alternative to the death penalty life imprisonment. It can be redemptive and seeks to correct the offenders.
In conclusion, over the last three editions, we laid out some of the thinking with regard to the issues of abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.
In doing so, we begin the affirmation of the sanctity of life as that is given to us biblically as well as within the larger African culture of which we are a part.
We have highlighted some of the differences in belief and understanding around the issues to lift up the differing values of those positions.
This series of articles is presented to provoke discussions so that we, as individuals and as church, can seriously engage in a theological journey together with the hope that, as a nation we will be able to articulate positions on these issues. I believe that it is in the context which the debate in the National Assembly must be centred around. These issues are too important to be obfuscated by under – handed politicking.
I leave you with the following quote from professor reverend John W de Gruchy, “What is morally wrong cannot be politically right”, as food for thought on the subject matter.
(Reverend Jan A Scholtz is the former chairperson of //Kharas Regional Council and former !Nami#nus constituency councillor and is a holder of Diploma in Theology, B-Theo (SA), a Diploma in Youth Work and Development from the University of Zambia (UNZA), Diploma in Education III (KOK) BA (HED) from UNISA