On Wednesday, Harare High Court judge, Justice Munamato Mutevedzi sentenced Tapiwa Makore Snr and Tafadzwa Shamba to death over the gruesome murder of a seven year old Tapiwa Makore in 2020.
Their sentencing brought smiles to the majority of Zimbabweans who were eagerly waiting for justice to prevail.
However, the question which remains unanswered is when these murderers are going to face their fate.
Currently the teapot shaped nation of Zimbabwe does not have a hangman as the last one retired in 2006.
The nation last carried out executions on 22 July 2005.
Since then, inmates who are on deathrow have spent the last ten years awaiting their final day on earth and several of them have applied for their death sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment.
In March this year, the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) said 62 inmates were on the death row awaiting execution.
The sentencing of Shamba and Makore adds to that number. This has left many Zimbabweans wondering if these callous murderers would ever be executed.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa is on record as being against the death penalty. Mnangagwa escaped the gallows by a whisker in 1964 after he was convicted of blowing up a train. The then 17yr old Mnangagwa was saved by age, as Rhodesian law did not allow execution of convicts under the age of 21.
The country however has not abolished capital punishment despite the President’s opposition. During the writing of the country’s new constitution in 2013, most Zimbabweans chose to keep the death penalty in the country’s statutes.
In 2017, the Amnesty International pleaded with Zimbabwe to abolish the law which it said “is a violation of the right to life.”
