Zimbabwe has passed a bill to abolish the death penalty. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who in the past was sentenced to death by the regime, has always said he is against this practice: his signature is considered a formal step.
To date, capital punishment is legal in around ten African states and in 55 states around the world: in 2004, twenty years ago, there were 76. The last African state to have abolished the death penalty was Zambia, two years ago in 2022, preceded in turn by the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Chad and Burkina Faso.
Mnangagwa had been convicted in 1965 for having blown up a train the previous year, during Zimbabwe’s war of independence from the regime: he was 21 years old, he was first arrested and then tortured, and his death sentence was subsequently commuted to 10 years in prison due to his young age. Emmerson Mnangagwa has been president of Zimbabwe since 2017 and in recent years he has repeatedly used his presidential powers to approve amnesties and commute death sentences to life sentences. There are currently over 60 people sentenced to death in Zimbabwe, but the sentences have not been carried out since 2005.
According to the Death Policy Information Center, Ten of the 15 countries that have abolished the death penalty for all crimes since 2015 are in Africa: Republic of Congo, Chad, Burkina Faso Guinea, Benin, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea Central African Republic and Zambia. To these should be added Ghana and Kenya who abolished it for some crimes. On the opposite front, the Democratic Republic of Congo (not to be confused with the aforementioned Republic of Congo) which last March revoked the moratorium that had been in force for about twenty years.
They remain on the continent black shirt of execution for death sentence Somalia and Egyptthe only two states that applied death sentences on the African continent in 2023. The first with 38 executions carried out, the second with 8, down from 24 the previous year.
According to Amnesty International, 1,153 death sentences were carried out in 2023more than the 883 performed in 2022. The country that performs the most is China, together with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
