When death penalty is justified...

A month or so ago I read an article by attorney Kgosi* Ngakaagae in one of the local newspapers. Ngakaagae put up a spirited condemnation of the death penalty; not so much a condemnation of the fact that it is practised in Botswana, as of the methods by which the death penalty is retained on our statute books.  Ngakaagae argued that if the people who get consulted in open forums like the Kgotla were told the truth about how inefficient some of the pro-deo lawyers who defend people facing capital punishment were, the Kgotlas might demand that death penalty be abolished. In addition to the inefficiency of the pro-deo lawyers, Ngakaagae criticised the cruelty and inhumanity with which the sentence is implemented.

Ngakaagae’s article has been troubling my conscience a great deal. Surely it is wrong for the state to kill an innocent person. No matter how you look at it, a human life taken in a situation other than during war, can never and should never be treated as collateral damage. Surely the death penalty is not much of a deterrent against would-be murderers, because many now resort to taking their own lives after committing the murders!

I had become a convert to Ngakaagae’s view of the death penalty; until yesterday when I read this week’s “Botswana Gazette” newspaper in which a man is reported to have killed his brother and the brother’s whole family of five members, including a four month old baby. The killer is appealing against six death sentences and is defended by none other than attorney Kgosietsile Ngakaagae himself. When I read about how the killer killed the four-month old baby with a knobkerrie, after killing its mother and grandmother, my mind did a violent rejection of everything that Ngakaagae’s earlier article had done to it. 

I suddenly realised the full justification of the death penalty. I understood that the death penalty is not always about punishing a criminal, but often about RIDDING SOCIETY OF A THREAT TO ITS EXISTENCE. Some will argue, as no doubt attorney Ngakaagae did, that the murderer Orelesitse Thokamolelo had smoked marijuana when he committed the crimes, and was therefore not wholly responsible for the gruesome acts, but I would beg to differ. There will always be marijuana illegally accessible to those who really want it. Society can and should accommodate those who illegally access marijuana, but commit no heinous crimes after smoking it. Society should get rid of (i.e. kill) those who, after smoking marijuana commit crimes of the nature of Orelesitse Thokamolelo’s crimes. The aim is neither to punish them, nor to “make an example of them”, as a warning to the living. The aim is to PROTECT society, period.