President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa

ZIMBABWE: SENATE APPROVES BILL TO ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

December 15, 2024:

Zimbabwe’s Senate has approved a bill to abolish the death penalty, a key step in scrapping a law last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago.
Zimbabwe’s Parliament said on December 12, 2024 that the bill was passed by senators the night before. The death penalty will be abolished if it is signed by the president, which is likely.
The southern African country uses hanging, and last executed someone in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner, or hangman.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s leader since 2017, has publicly spoken of his opposition to capital punishment. He has cited his own experience of being sentenced to death — which was later changed to 10 years in prison — for blowing up a train during the country’s war of independence in the 1960s. He has used presidential amnesties to commute death sentences to life in prison.
Zimbabwe has more than 60 prisoners currently on death row.