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Flip-flop Support for Referendum on Death Penalty by Pastor Mmusi Maimane

By selecting the subject of the death penalty, Mmusi Maimane has opened the way to a potential political and legal minefield by saying he initially supported a referendum on the death penalty. Two days later he backed down. Business Day in an editorial published "It is contentious because the Constitutional Court, in a seminal judgment in the first case it heard in 1995, set out why the death penalty undermined the kind of society envisaged by the Constitution and why public opinion should not sway the court on the issue." The Constitutional Court said: "The rights to life and dignity are the most important of all human rights, and the source of all other personal rights in Chapter Three. By committing ourselves to a society founded on the recognition of human rights we are required to value these two rights above all others. And this must be demonstrated by the state in everything that it does, including the way it punishes criminals. This is not achieved by objectifying murderers and putting them to death to serve as an example to others in the expectation that they might possibly be deterred thereby."

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