Hundreds of South Africans took to social media, calling for capital punishment for the three men accused of killing a family of seven from Newark.
Image: Boris Zerwann
THE death penalty debate has resurfaced.
In last week’s edition of the POST, May 6 – 10, there was a flood of comments from angry and heartbroken readers. The cry to bring back the death penalty is real.
Among those cries is an excellent editorial, one that cuts through the noise and asks the question no one in power wants to answer: what are we supposed to do when the law stops protecting us?
Let us be honest, people are not just debating. They are screaming for justice. I hear that anger and feel it too. When a family have to identify a loved one, who was raped, stabbed, shot and dumped, then we have a problem.
South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995 when it was ruled unconstitutional. But 31 years later, we have to ask ourselves a painful question: has that decision cost us our safety?
Our murder rate remains one of the highest in the world.
Not because we are violent by nature, but because too many people have learnt that they can commit a crime and still walk free.
Public trust in the criminal justice system is not just low, it has shattered. People do not feel protected, they feel abandoned.
And now, the Newark murders. Three suspects are in custody. One is still on the run. And while we wait for the courts to move at their usual slow pace, the rest of us are left holding our children a little tighter at night. I believe the government must stop hiding behind silence. What we need is an open, honest, public debate, not in boardrooms, but on the streets, in community halls, on the radio where grandmothers and taxi drivers can speak.
Let the people be heard. If my memory serves me, Deputy Minister Narend Singh once initiated the call for the death penalty. At that time, many disagreed. But now?
I hope he has the courage to take that call back to Parliament. Not as a politician, but as a South African who also wants to be safe again. Because that’s all we’re asking for, not revenge, just the right to live without fear.
DHAYALAN MOODLEY
Mobeni Heights