Celebrating abolition in Zimbabwe twenty years after its last execution

On New Year’s Eve 2024, President Emmerson Mnangagwa assented to legislation to abolish the death penalty, making Zimbabwe the 128th country to end capital punishment. It had previously been one of 44 states deemed ‘abolitionist de facto’ (ADF) by the UN, meaning it had not conducted an execution for more than 10 years, although its courts were still handing down death sentences and more than 60 prisoners were being held on death row. (All of their sentences will now be substituted with terms of imprisonment.)

In the past, it was thought that moratoria in executions reflected a temporary stage on the way to abolition. However, more recent research suggests that moving from ADF to full, abolitionist de jure status can be a difficult and protracted process, characterised by inertia. Some states, such as Kenya, whose last execution was in 1987, have been ADF for decades: the widespread idea that once a country becomes ADF, it is on an inevitable path to de jure abolition, is false. Needless to say, when a jurisdiction retains the death penalty on its statute book, there will always be a risk that executions will resume if political circumstances change. Myanmar’s four executions in 2022 were its first since the 1980s, and when Donald Trump’s first administration presided over 13 executions of inmates convicted in US federal courts in his final months in office, they ended an effective moratorium that had been in place since 2003.

Hence the story of Zimbabwe’s road to abolition is instructive, containing lessons applicable to other ADF jurisdictions and the broader, global movement to embed human rights norms. We have spent the past two years conducting research on the concept of ADF and the challenges to abolition in ADF states. We have considered the utility of the definition and interrogated the political and symbolic meanings of ADF and the experiences of those prisoners living on death row in ADF states for an indefinite period of time. In so doing, we have sought to understand why some states, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean, remain under ADF status for decades, and what value is served by a death sentence imposed in the absence of executions. Until December 2024, Zimbabwe was one of our case studies.

While Robert Mugabe was president of Zimbabwe, prospects for abolition were low. President Mnangagwa’s accession in 2017 immediately changed conditions in favour of abolition, for it soon became apparent that he was a staunch and principled opponent of capital punishment. Arrested as a teenage activist fighting the Rhodesian regime led by Ian Smith, he was sentenced to death himself, a sentence later commuted because of his young age. Once in office, he described the death penalty as a “flagrant affront to the right to life and dignity.”

But if his support was a necessary condition for abolition – not least because if Parliament were to pass a Bill, he would have to sign it into law – it was not a sufficient one. This required the generation of political momentum through national efforts, with international support. As directors respectively of the University of Oxford’s Death Penalty Research Unit, which, among other activities, uses academic research to challenge retention of the death penalty, and the Death Penalty Project in London, which provides pro bono legal representation and has long been engaged in anti-death penalty advocacy, we are proud to have been able to contribute to this.

Zimbabwe’s abolitionist trajectory could be dated back to 2013, when a new constitution replaced the mandatory death penalty for murder, a legacy of colonialism, with a discretionary sentence that could only be imposed on males aged 21-70 who had been convicted of murder with aggravating factors. Two years later, Zimbabwe joined the ranks of ADF nations, having not conducted an execution since 2005.

However, abolition was not imminent. The then President, Robert Mugabe, spoke about capital punishment in enthusiastic terms, saying it should be used to cut crime, while Zimbabwe consistently voted against the annual UN General Assembly motion calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty.

In 2015, we were invited as experts by the Swiss government, through its Embassy, to advise and assist local efforts to pursue abolition. It was on our first visit that we met and began a decade long partnership with Veritas, a local NGO, led by their outspoken and respected Director, Val Ingram-Thorpe. With Val and her colleague, Brian Crozier, who had drafted the 2013 Constitution, we were able to engage and build a network with others who worked on this issue. Veritas and similar organisations had worked on abolition for many years, laying the groundwork for our involvement. Foreign diplomats and civil society have played an important part in the evolving campaign ever since, helping to create partnerships between Zimbabwean abolitionists, the media and the country’s political and legal elites. But it was always clear to us and to them that change would only come if its principal impetus originated within Zimbabwe.

Experience in other jurisdictions had taught us that governments can be reluctant to abolish because they fear a public backlash, yet often such anxieties are misplaced. In 2016-17 we carried out a representative survey, finding that although 60 per cent of Zimbabweans supported retention, a huge majority would be happy to accept abolition if it were to be enacted, and that once respondents were made aware of the shortcomings of the criminal process and the tendency of capital punishment to afflict the most disadvantaged and vulnerable disproportionately, support for it markedly declined.

We followed this in 2020 with interviews with 42 ‘opinion leaders’, including politicians, lawyers, religious leaders and senior journalists. Almost all, 90 per cent, supported abolition, saying they believed that the death penalty was an abuse of human rights, prone to error, a poor deterrent and harmful to their country’s reputation abroad. The foreword to this report, which accepted our findings and contained an unequivocal call for abolition, was written by none other than President Mnangagwa.

However, there were still several steps to go before abolition could become a reality. Over the next four years we worked with Veritas and other Zimbabwean civil society organisations, parliamentarians, diplomats and others to help to create the broad-based consensus that has now achieved success. Our collaborative work led to the introduction of a Private Members’ Bill in the Parliament. This, of course, was exactly what happened when the death penalty for murder was abolished in Britain in 1965, through a Bill moved by the backbench Labour MP Sidney Silverman.

In Zimbabwe, this momentous task fell to the Opposition member Edwin Mushoriwa, and on 13 December 2024 Zimbabwe’s Death Penalty Abolition Bill cleared the second chamber, the Senate, leaving one last requirement, Mnangagwa’s signature, which was provided on 31 December 2024.

It was telling that in that final Senate debate, speakers who supported abolition couched their arguments in terms of both international human rights norms and the culture and traditions of pre-colonial Zimbabwe. Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi emphasised the latter in a powerful, moving speech: “Culturally and historically, before colonisers came to our country, we had no death penalty,” he told his colleagues. “Our culture does not allow us to kill someone because they have murdered someone… That is the point that I am trying to put across.”

Later, Senator Angeline Tongogara focused on the international dimension: “This Bill, reflective of a growing global movement towards the abolition of capital punishment, demands our attention as legislators entrusted with the mandate to uphold justice, preserve human dignity and ensure that our legal framework aligns with the contemporary human rights standard.” Though the Bill had been introduced by an opposition MP, as it progressed it gained cross-party support, an important and rare example of parties working together to promote human rights.

Zimbabwe’s decision comes at a propitious time for the wider abolitionist cause, especially in Africa, where only six of the 55 African Union member states are still actively retentionist. Ghana, Chad, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic have also abolished capital punishment within the last five years, and some of the 18 remaining ADF countries within the African Union appear to be ripe for change, notably Kenya, where the president commuted the sentences of 680 death row prisoners in 2023.

By joining the world’s abolitionist de jure majority, Senator Tongogara said, “Zimbabwe strengthens its position as a progressive nation committed to human rights and justice.” It is to be hoped that this approach will soon be followed elsewhere in Africa.     

Carolyn Hoyle is Professor of Criminology in the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and Director of the Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU).

Parvais Jabbar is Co-Executive Director of The Death Penalty Project and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.