I support capital punishment

Tumie Modise | Monday February 29, 2016 15:41

I strongly believe that if one takes a life they should simply forfeit their right to live too. If one steals they should lose their offending limb, if one rapes they shouldn’t be raped but be disarmed, relieved of their libido, the one that drives them to rape in the first place. In my books, the only way to curb crime is to deter it.

Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: “Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks.” Beats my mind why people kill when they fear death themselves. Pedestrian line of thinking? Hardly.

A bogeyman has been let loose in town, in Gaborone to be exact. It’s like someone dropped him down from the sky, with only one strict instruction - to eliminating men. As if we don’t already have a dire shortage of men, of eligible bachelors in this country. The good ones are taken either by other women or men, and the rest have pot bellies. I say this with the utmost respect.

Since October last year, strange things have been happening around, strange but devastating. If it’s not someone been shot Hollywood style in their living rooms, then it’s someone being hacked to death, even burnt to death while sleeping. It’s like a wild West stuff you only watch in movies, only its real. As usual, we are stunned, we talk, we mourn and then life goes on.

Last week I read in one local paper, of a brother who just recently completed a sentence for taking his then girlfriend’s life. I am not sure of what his sentence was, whether he even served all of it, but the man is in the news again, this time for allegedly attempting to take the life of his present girlfriend. Had he succeeded, it would have been a brace for him. This time around the woman survived to tell the story. But then again women are brave; we are just daring like that! We can get inside a dragon hole, dig it out, and eat its eggs too! The biblical Samson was just a baby compared to today’s males. I am not judging anyone but it is actually true that we are mostly attracted to hell raisers, pure nutters most of the time. Bible thumping brothers don’t appeal to us, back in the day we used to call them ‘ma SU, nobody wanted them.  No we don’t want sissies, we want action; we want a guy with that dangerous streak about him. A scar on the face is an added advantage. Never mind that we scream at the sight of a cockroach.

While we mourn, wail, curse and ultimately accept our loved ones’ passing, counsellors and religious leaders take charge and do their best to calm us down. Credit to them, they really are pro’s at doing that, never mind that they can go as far as lying just to calm everyone down. Last week, as we again wailed for a couple whose lives have been cut short so cruelly, one commentator on Facebook insulted God. Can you blame him? I didn’t, I blame religious leaders, the ones who always shift the blame from criminals then pass it either to God or Satan.

Then there is this other thing called law. Even when a wrong doer is caught in the act, in terms of law, the court has to prove that indeed the person committed the crime, never mind if the person had already confessed. They are always free to later change their minds. So criminals go scot free, continue to engage in criminal activities. No wonder we don’t have a full time hangman anymore.