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Zimbabwe's government backs a move to abolish the death penalty having last hanged someone in 2005
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FILE - Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa attends a session at the Africa Pavilion at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 7, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has agreed to back a move in Parliament to abolish the death penalty, a punishment that was last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago. Mnangagwa, who won reelection for a second term in Aug, 2023, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the death penalty, citing his own personal experience when he was sentenced to death in the 1960s for blowing up a train during Zimbabwe's independence war, when the country was called Rhodesia and under white minority rule. - photo by AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has agreed to back a move in Parliament to abolish the death penalty, a punishment that was last used in the southern African nation nearly 20 years ago. Zimbabwe used hanging as its means of execution, but hasn’t hanged anyone since 2005, partly because no one had been willing to take up the job of state executioner — or hangman — for years. In 2022, Zimbabwe’s Sunday Mail newspaper reported that several people did apply for the role, including two women.