PARLIAMENT will start public hearings to abolish the death penalty on Monday amid growing calls for Zimbabwe to put a stop to capital punishment in law and practice.
The public hearings will be led by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
Citizens Coalition for Change Dzivarasekwa legislator Edwin Mushoriwa raised the motion for the introduction of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Bill in Parliament last year.
In February this year, Cabinet agreed to abolish the death penalty for murder offences, almost two decades after the last execution.
Zimbabwe has been on a de facto moratorium on executions for about 17 years with the last having been conducted in 2005.
The Constitution maintains the death sentence but excludes women, men under the age of 21 and men over the age of 70 from being sent to the gallows.
Zimbabwe currently has 62 convicted prisoners on the death row.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has publicly denounced the death penalty after surviving the hangman’s noose on a technicality during the liberation struggle.
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Legal think-tank Veritas has proposed the retrial of all inmates sentenced to death in a model law presented as part of its latest push for the abolition of the death sentence in Zimbabwe.
Global human rights defender, Amnesty International, has also been vocal on the need to scrap the death penalty.
At least 170 countries have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice.
By approving the Death Penalty Abolition Bill, Zimbabwe will join other southern African countries such as Angola, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa and Zambia that have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
