Justice Minister Pindi Chana told a stakeholders dialogue on the death penalty in Dar es Salaam on 10 October that the government was seeking more proposals on alternatives to capital punishment based on the commission’s report.
According to Ms Chana, most of the public views already collected by the commission, which was chaired by Tanzania's former Chief Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, suggested that the death penalty was in violation of basic human rights and should be commuted to life imprisonment.
Two offences carry a mandatory death penalty in Tanzania; murder and treason. In its report published in July 2023, the government commission said opinion in the country was sharply divided on its merits and demerits as the best punishment for such crimes.
It also noted that the penalty had not been implemented in Tanzania for several years, causing much stress to convicts currently languishing on death row as they uncertainly await execution.
Official government statistics show that by May 2023 there were 691 prisoners in Tanzanian prisons waiting for their death sentences to be carried out.
“The suggestions have varied between retaining the death penalty as a suitable punishment for capital offences and deterrent against similar crimes being committed repeatedly, or removing it on grounds that it is too cruel and does not take into account the right to life,” the commission said.
It recommended amendments to Tanzania’s Penal Code to allow for alternative penalties in line with circumstances behind each related crime, and for automatic conversion of the death sentence to life imprisonment in cases where execution is delayed for more than three years.
The latest discourse on capital punishment in Tanzania comes alongside a recent African Court order for Tanzania to scrap corporal punishment from its laws in alignment with the Charter establishing the court.
Ruling on an appeal by a prisoner serving a 30-year-sentence for armed robbery, the ACHPR said Tanzanian courts had violated the prisoner’s “right to dignity” by sentencing him to be caned 12 times as part of his punishment.
It said provisions for corporal punishment in Tanzania’s laws needed to be removed “to make them compliant with the prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights”.
The continental court ordered Tanzania to submit a report on the status of implementation of the order “every six months until the court considers that there has been full implementation”.
Tanzania’s history of opposition to corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure has mainly been confined to its application in schools due to numerous incidents of teachers and sometimes local government officials brutally punishing pupils, often in front of their peers, for behavioural offences.
However, the African Court ruling did not distinguish between corporal punishment in schools and across the board, including as a penalty for serious criminal offences.
Tanzania’s Corporal Punishment Act is meant to regulate the use of the penalty, while the country's Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Act also recognise it as legitimate for offences such as rape.
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