Calls to ban death penalty get louder

Human Rights lobby groups have jointly called for the total abolition of the death penalty in Zimbabwe.

The country has 97 people on death row and last week Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa said he would be requesting Cabinet approval to commute all the pending executions to different sentences including life.

Coordinator of Amnesty International, Vongai Chikwanda said government must abolish death penalty on both men and women because death penalties had been unjustly applied throughout the history of Zimbabwe.  

Zwala board chairperson said people given death sentences suffer mental illness because both the sentence and the conditions induce a sense of shock.