THE recent discovery of nine women’s bodies in and around Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni, in Gauteng over a period of two months has reignited the continuous conversation about the crisis of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in SA, with some suggesting that reinstating the death penalty could contribute towards curbing these crimes.

The call for capital punishment to be reinstated in the country is contentious, and for Josha Daniels of the Rise Up Movement, who is also a member of the NACSA4U Human Trafficking Working Group, weighing the arguments for (pros) and against (cons) such a move should be the starting point.

According to Daniels, the following are the pros and cons for the reinstatement of the death penalty:

Pros:

• The death penalty would serve as punishement for horrific crimes, including severe acts of femicide, child murder, or human trafficking, because many believe the perpetrator has forfeited their own right to life.

“It gives victims’ families a sense of full payback, ‘an eye for an eye’,” said Daniels.

• It would ensure that dangerous predators are permanently removed from society.
• It would send a strong symbolic message of zero tolerance towards GBVF.

Cons:

• Daniels said the death penalty does not actually stop crime and is not a real deterrent to committing a crime

“Criminals do not stop to calculate penalties when committing impulsive or passion-driven domestic violence. Criminology shows criminals fear getting caught, not the severity of the sentence. If police detection rates and conviction rates remain low, a heavy sentence changes nothing,” said Daniels.

• There is a risk of wrongly executing an innocent person 
• The South African Constitution guarantees the Right to Life and Protection from Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

Also read: Human trafficking and deceptive recruitment: What can be done?

“Bringing back execution requires rewriting our Human Rights Bill, which could weaken protections for other basic rights,” said Daniels.

• Reinstating the death penalty would amount to ignoring the root causes of why crime is so rife in South Africa.

“The death penalty acts as a quick emotional fix, but it does not fix the real problem. To stop GBV, human trafficking, and child abuse, we do not need harsher laws on paper, we need effective law enforcement and swift justice in practise,” said Daniels.

Dr Monique Emser, senior lecturer in Political Studies at UKZN and chair of the NACSA4U Human Trafficking Working Group, said a critical question that needs to be answered is whether the country’s criminal justice model currently produces acceptable outcomes.

“The evidence suggests it is not. South Africa continues to record some of the world’s highest levels of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), rape, child sexual violence and murder, with no sustained decline commensurate with the scale of public investment in prevention efforts.

“This points to failures at both the state and societal levels. South Africa has invested heavily in awareness campaigns, community dialogues and public education initiatives, yet there is little evidence that these interventions have produced sustained reductions in serious violent crime at the population level. Awareness may improve reporting and public knowledge, but awareness alone is not the same as prevention,” said Emser.

Emser said institutional weakness in the country’s justice system could result in capital punishment, if reintroduced, failing to achieve the hoped for goals of reducing high levels of violent crime.

Emser added that whether one is for or against the death penalty being reinstated, “the debate continues to resonate with many South Africans who feel that victims’ rights have become secondary to the procedural rights afforded to offenders”.

Advocate Liechen Strydom of Liberation Legal Consulting, and a member of the NACSA4U Human Trafficking Working Group, said the Kempton Park cases underscore the need for responses that are proactive, adequately resourced, and focused on disrupting the conditions that allow such violence to continue.

“Declaration of a national disaster is a necessary recognition of scale. It must be matched by consistent enforcement, accurate language, perpetrator-focused accountability, and a societal refusal to normalise the violence that continues to claim the lives of women and children,” said Strydom.

South Africa formally declared GBVF a national disaster in November 2025.

The Constitutional Court abolished capital punishment in S v Makwanyane (1995).

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