Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa signs bill abolishing the death penalty

Zimbabwe has officially abolished the death penalty after President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed into law a bill on Tuesday which will commute sentences of around 60 prisoners on death row to jail time.

The last execution was carried out almost two-decades ago in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner.

President Mnangagwa faced the death penalty himself in the 1960s during Zimbabwe’s war of independence.

Amnesty International hailed the new law on Tuesday. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the human rights organisation labelled the move as great progress for the country, and a major milestone in ending “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”. They also described it as a “beacon of hope for the abolitionist movement in the region”.

Other African countries such as Kenya, Liberia and Ghana have also recently taken “positive steps” towards abolishing capital punishment, but are yet to pass it into law according to the group, which campaigns against the death penalty.

The Zimbabwean leader has publicly expressed his opposition to capital punishment since 2017. He’s cited his own experience of being sentenced to death, a punishment which was later changed to a 10-year prison sentence, for blowing up a train during his country’s liberation war from white minority rule.

He’s also used his presidential powers a number of times to commute death sentences of various inmates to life in prison.

According to Amnesty, globally, 113 countries, including 24 in Africa have fully abolished the death penalty. The group says it recorded close to 1,200 known executions around the world in 2023, a sharp increase from the below 900 cases recorded the previous year.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have accounted for almost 90% of all known executions recorded by Amnesty in 2023. Somalia and the US were the next two countries to follow. The group says it will continue to campaign against the cruel sentence until it is fully abolished.