For Last Tamai Maengahama (48), the year 2025 started on a very happy note. After spending ten years of his life in jail – during half of which he faced the possibility of execution by hanging for a crime he had not committed – Maengahama decided to commit his life to fight the death penalty in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the world. 

“The horror of the possibility of a death sentence was a daily torment, not just for me and my colleague, but for countless others in similar positions,” Maengahama, whose 2016 conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2021, told Al Mayadeen English. 

“Even for those convicted of the gravest crimes, the death penalty is not the answer,” Maengahama added. “There is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty acts as a stronger deterrent to crime than other forms of punishment. Moreover, world over there is evidence that the death penalty has often been used as a weapon against political opponents. It is an affront to our shared humanity.”

A dream come true

Maengahama’s dream came true when, on December 31, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed the Death Penalty Abolition Bill into law, fulfilling his promise to do away with the 134-year-old law that also nearly took away his life. The Bill, which was introduced to Parliament in December 2023 by Edwin Mushoriwa, an opposition lawmaker, got the full backing of legislators across the political divide, culminating in its promulgation on the last day of 2024. 

“Notwithstanding any other law, no court shall impose sentence of death upon a person for any offence, whenever committed, but instead shall impose whatever other competent sentence is appropriate in the circumstances of the case,” reads the mainstay clause of the law. “The Supreme Court shall not confirm a sentence of death imposed upon an appellant, whenever that sentence may have been imposed, but instead shall substitute (it with) whatever other competent sentence is appropriate in the circumstances of the case; no sentence of death, whenever imposed, shall be carried out.” 

Abolition followed surveys, consultations

The abolition of capital punishment in Zimbabwe took strong political leadership and close, sustained collaboration between government and civil society for almost a decade as there always had been resistance from some quarters. It was a culmination of nationwide consultations carried out by the government in March 2023 which confirmed that the death penalty was not very popular in the southern African nation. According to a 2018 survey conducted by international criminologist, Dr. Mai Sato, in collaboration with the Mass Public Opinion Institute – a local research thinktank – most Zimbabweans indicated that they would want the country to do away with capital punishment, which the late former president, Robert Mugabe, favored. Critics accused Mugabe of using capital punishment as a weapon to cow political opponents. 

The study showed that those who had strong opinions on the death penalty were not well-informed on its administration in practice; they knew little about how and when it was used, and they based their support primarily on an erroneous belief in its deterrent effect.

“There appeared to be broad political agreement that abolition was desirable and achievable in the short term,” the researchers pointed out in a summary of the survey. 

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A round of applause

The end of the death penalty in Zimbabwe drew applause from local and international human rights advocates.

“The abolition of the death penalty in Zimbabwe is not merely a legal reform, it is a profound act of moral courage,” Maengahama said. “It recognizes the inherent dignity of every human being, regardless of their crimes. It acknowledges that justice must be tempered with mercy, that the pursuit of truth must be unwavering, and that the possibility of error must never be ignored.”

He said his own conviction, later reversed on appeal, exposed the flaws inherent in the judicial systems. “Innocent lives are destroyed, families torn apart, and the very fabric of justice frayed. The death penalty, with its irreversible nature, magnifies these injustices exponentially.”

“I am delighted that the Death Penalty Abolition Act will become law,” said Mushoriwa, the legislator who introduced the Bill privately in Parliament. “Removing the death penalty sends a message to all that our nation should respect and uphold the value of human dignity. This achievement is a move in the right direction.”

Lucia Masuka, Amnesty International Zimbabwe’s director, applauded Zimbabwe’s decision to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.

“This is not just great progress for Zimbabwe, it is also a beacon of hope for the abolitionist movement in the region, and a major milestone in the global collective pursuit for an end to this ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.”

Professor Carolyn Hoyle, director of the Death Penalty Research Unit, also welcomed the abolition. “Zimbabwe has set an example for other countries across Africa to follow in abolishing the death penalty.” 

From abolitionist de facto to full abolitionist

Until the new law, Zimbabwe had been an abolitionist de facto state for two decades, not having carried out any executions since 2005, although the courts continued to impose the death penalty, resulting in a bloated death row, with the fear of hangings always hovering over the convicts. When the ruling ZANU-PF party replaced Mugabe with Mnangagwa as president of the country in 2017, the former was in the process of recruiting a hangman in readiness to resume executions. However, since 2018, President Mnangagwa – an abolitionist himself – has been regularly commuting the death sentences of some of these death roll prisoners to life in prison, while outrightly pardoning others. As a result, when the abolition took effect, only about 70 people were still on death row. 

Mnangagwa, himself a former convict, narrowly escaped the hangman’s noose in the 1960s on the technicality that he was under 21 years old when his colleagues were hanged after they were captured as they fought against white colonial rule. He had also previously escaped execution by a military tribunal earlier during the same liberation war.

A legacy of colonialism

Just as in many other African jurisdictions, the death penalty was brought to Zimbabwe by the British colonial settlers in 1890 and, as pre-independence regimes sought to maintain power, the penalty could be imposed for an increasing number of crimes – throwing stones at cars, for example, or putting stones on railway tracks. In Zimbabwe (previously Rhodesia), the death penalty was regularly imposed on black men who got into sexual relations with white women as the colonial authorities in the country – together with those in neighboring South Africa – suffered from a racial phobia that came to be known as the Black Peril. Independence in 1980 did not result in the immediate abolition of the law, as the Mugabe administration retained it.

‘Africa abolishing at faster rate’

By taking this landmark step to abolish capital punishment, Zimbabwe joins 29 other countries on the African continent that have done so. Currently, 26 African states have fully abolished the death penalty and another four have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Only three sub-Saharan African states – Botswana, South Sudan, and Somalia – have recently carried out executions. In March last year, the Democratic Republic of Congo announced the lifting of a moratorium on executions. 

The Death Penalty Research Unit says Africa is moving toward abolition of the death penalty at a faster rate than any other continent, pointing out that in the past decade alone, Chad, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe have all abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes or for all crimes.

It says Zimbabwe’s decision to remove the death penalty is a further opportunity for other abolitionist de facto states to follow. There are 18 remaining abolitionist de facto states in Africa – where the death penalty is retained in law, but executions have not been carried out in over a decade – including some of Zimbabwe’s regional neighbors, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Globally, 110 countries are fully abolitionist, while nine have abolished the penalty for ordinary crimes. Another 22 countries worldwide are abolitionist in practice, meaning they have not executed anyone for at least 10 years, while 54 countries are still retentionist.