[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 15



SOUTH AFRICA:

Still in the shadow of the noose----Even though capital punishment has
been abolished, dozens continue to languish on death row


They sit under the shadow of a gallows that has long fallen silent: South
African death row prisoners who still have not had their grim sentences
commuted.

Many of them fought apartheid in the two smaller guerrilla armies, the
PAC's Azanian People's Liberation Army (Apla) and Azapo's Azanian National
Liberation Army (Azanla) - and others were simply killers. The death
penalty was ruled unconstitutional in 1995.

Among the former guerrillas is David Nkuna, an inmate at Pretoria's
Maximum-B Prison, who, along with two comrades, took the issue up with
President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Justice Brigitte Mabandla at the
Constitutional Court.

Last month, said advocate Frank Snyckers, who initially argued Nkuna's
case last year, Mbeki and Mabandla were ordered "to file on or before the
15th of May a final report in terms of the substitution of the sentence of
death".

The judges ruled that if the president and the minister were unable to do
so by that date, they would have to file an application before May 2 for a
postponement.

A year ago, the number on death row had fallen to 62, but Snyckers was
unable to say what the current figure was. The man who first raised the
issue, advocate Rudolph Jansen, national director of Lawyers for Human
Rights, is overseas and could not be reached for comment on the number
remaining on death row.

But the prisoners themselves are quite eloquent. Nkuna once told me: "We
became terrorists of the past and in prison, slaves of the previous
dispensation. [Today] we are slaves of our own black government, which we
have raised to power by our own sweat."

The problem is that not all capital crimes were the same: some could be
cold-blooded serial killers and others could have killed an abusive
partner. This also means that a blanket conversion will not work.

The matter is complicated by the issue of the network of some 200
self-described political prisoners in prisons, some of whom are also on
death row.

The state flatly denies that it keeps people incarcerated for political
reasons, but former Apla brigadier-general Raymond Fihla is not so sure,
telling the Saturday Star that "there are quite a number of them,
especially those who were involved in Apla activities".

But Fihla readily acknowledges that exactly who is a "political" and who
not in the PAC's own eyes is complicated by two factors: firstly, many
Apla members wittingly or unwittingly continued the armed struggle after
its official cessation; and secondly, many new members were recruited
behind bars, so their crimes were clearly apolitical.

In the meantime, those who could have been paroled by now if their
sentences were commuted to "life imprisonment" - in effect 25 years -
could be eligible for parole now, but death row prisoners don't accrue
points towards parole.

And in the period in which Nkuna's case has taken to go through the
Constitutional Court, at least one death row inmate has died: Abel
Ramarope, an Apla cadre doing time for robbery in Pretoria's Maximum-B,
died last September of causes which are still not clear.

Ramarope became an anarchist 2 years ago after eight years behind bars -
and a key organiser of the network of "politicals", running a clandestine
night school in prison.

He wrote, in a 2004 article entitled "Not yet uhuru! South African
democracy and the plight of ex-combatants", that "many PAC, Azapo and BCM
[Black Consciousness Movement] members still languish in the country's
prisons", while many Umkhonto weSizwe members had been pardoned.

(source: The Star)