It is very disturbing to read letters like “Bring back death penalty”, April 13.
To think that people still believe that this scourge will solve anything, after it destroyed so many countries clinging to this myth, should move us to demolish the false belief that our country should reintroduce it.
These folks are some of the most dangerous that a country can produce because all they do to promote their misguided ideology is the use of lies, half-truths, myths, distortions, exaggerations, thereby whipping up emotions of an already frustrated, fearful citizenry.
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The ANC is the only party that steadfastly carried out the agreement at Codesa that this inhumane, cruel form of punishment should never come back to our shores. The others used it to win votes of a misinformed, gullible electorate.
No other party has shown the same resolve to rid our country of it after its devastating past where it was used to kill political prisoners, not only in the apartheid era but also the colonial period.
Second, no human being is untreatable. If this guy believes in a god, he will know that the God of the Bible never gives up on even the vilest sinner.
Third, our government is not reckless by having abolished it, rubber-stamped by all 11 eminent Constitutional Court justices in 1995.
It is totally in line with the rest of the civilised world.
Fourth, by invoking higher beings as having ordered its followers to kill each other is indeed extremely dangerous. To further heap the gods of the three biggest religions together is even more confusing.
The questions this guy and all those who spread their poisonous ideologies must answer are: how are you going to kill almost 20 000 murderers, if they are all caught, every year? What about rapists, gangsters, “terrorists”, drunk and reckless drivers who also kill hundreds of people?
Why did Israel decide to abolish the death penalty in 1961 after the hanging of Adolf Eichmann for his part in the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany?
The death penalty can only thrive in an environment of fear, hatred, vengeance and unforgiveness. Anyone who promotes it is himself a potential murderer.
* KOERT MEYER, Welgelegen.
**The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.