daniel chigunweThe Rhodesia Herald, November 11, 1965
DR Hastings Kamuzu Banda told Malawi’s Parliament in Zomba today that public hanging must be used in the case of “hideous crimes” against the State.
He was speaking on an amendment to the country’s Penal Code which makes public execution legal in Malawi.
Rebels should be hanged in public when they have committed “hideous crimes” against the State, Dr Banda said.
The amendment which passed its second reading allows a sentence to be carried out on a convicted person “in such place as may be specified in the death warrant”. Previously death warrants took place only inside a prison.
The prime minister said that during the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya, the British government had allowed public hanging. The same was true in Sierra Leone.
“So what is wrong when we have captured individuals who have committed hideous crimes, and we must show our people that the men are really dead? Why should people object to that?
“This kind of hypocrisy I cannot stand, because it is hypocrisy. I admit in recent years there has been an outcry in Britain against capital punishment. They have been at it for 1,000 years. We only started last year.
“You cannot judge us by your standards because those standards were built up under different circumstances. This Bill is necessary, we cannot listen to what outsiders, who do not understand circumstances under which we live, say.
“None of our people must be left in doubt as to whether or not our Government is doing its duty in punishing people who have committed hideous crimes. This thing must be done publicly.”
After a back-bencher rose to support the Bill, seven Members suggested, “hanging by slow torture”. One said public hanging should be carried out at the Central Stadium in Blantyre, scene of last year’s independence celebrations.
The leader of the opposition, Mr M Blackwood, said: “We have had some divisions and dissensions on this side of the House. Certainly we are opposed to some of the more lurid suggestions made opposite. As to the actual purpose of the Bill, we are somewhat divided among ourselves. I myself have been casting doubt about it in my mind as to what would be the position in the UK if the country suffered invasion and raiders from the Welsh mountains come down into local villages. “What would be the reaction? I am far from certain that it would not have been the same cry of ‘string them up’.
“I am not certain that the Bill is not right in the circumstances in which we find ourselves in Malawi, and I feel that it is desirable in these circumstances to satisfy the public that these people are truly dead, and that they should be seen to be dead by the public at large, I myself would be prepared to support the Bill.”– Iana.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
The death penalty has long been mandatory in Malawi for those convicted of murder and treason, but on April 28 this year, Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeal declared the death penalty “unconstitutional as an impermissible derogation from the right to life under the Malawi’s Constitution …. All statutes prescribing the death sentence are effectively amended so that life imprisonment constitutes now the maximum sentence in Malawi.”
The right to life is the mother of all rights. Most countries have since banned the death penalty, with convicts getting life sentences instead.
Online Reporter