Public execution (beheading) of one of the killers of English officials in Yokohama, 1859 — Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
It's probably wiser for South Africans to hang together than hang separately . . .
Jessica Motaung, better known as Miss Gauteng, would have had at least three fewer fans after the Miss South Africa contest last week.
Miss Motaung suggested a referendum on bringing back the death penalty. And if Sipho Gavin, Siphiwe Bholo and Boy Ndweni were watching, they probably shuddered.
Gavin, Bholo and Ndweni were sentenced to death for the 1993 murder of Zandra Mitchley, her son Shaun, 15, and his friend, Claire Silberbauer, 14, at Eikenhof, south of Johannesburg.
Their claim that their confession was extracted under torture was denied by presiding judge DJ Curlewis. They escaped the hangman's noose on a technicality and are currently in jail.
This was all fine and dandy until the Pan Africanist Congress threw a spanner in the works by claiming that their military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army, had been responsible for the murders.
A re-trial has been called for and there is every likelihood that the three will now be acquitted.
How many others may have been wrongfully convicted? One wonders...
Advocate Jan Munnik, former Police Reporting Officer of the Witwatersrand, volunteers a chilling figure. Judges have ruled that confessions were voluntarily and freely made and therefore admissible in 90% of the cases where the signatories claimed that they were tortured.
How many of those wise men still sit on the bench? One wonders...
That aside, given that the majority of us have a somewhat hysterical obsession with bringing back the death penalty, I began to ponder the question of "humane" methods of execution.
(All right. Oxymoron. Humour me.)
A few centuries ago, the Italians were fond of La Mazzolata, which Alexandre Dumas describes thus:
"The executioner raised his mace. The criminal strove to rise, but ere he had time, the mace fell on his left temple. The executioner let fall his mace, drew his knife, and with one stroke opened his throat; and mounting on his stomach, stamped violently on it with his feet. At every stroke, a jet of blood sprang from the wound."
La Mazzolata was replaced by the more "humane" decapitato, which the French "refined" into the guillotine. Previously, French condemned were "broken on the wheel", bound to a horizontally hung cartwheel and their limbs broken by an executioner wielding an iron bar.
For attempting to kill Louis XV in 1757, Damiens was broken on the wheel while still conscious. His limbs were then attached to four horses which were whipped hard until he was torn apart. In cases where "mercy" was recommended, the victim was first strangled before being broken.
The Spaniards loved the garotte — a vice tightened around the throat. The Brits were less mechanically inclined and simply used beheading with an axe up until 1747. Then the gallows became amusement parks of the Victorian era.
Tens of thousands would gather to chant: "Oh, my, think I'm going to die." One never knew when the weight around the condemned's legs would be enough to rip the head right off. Fun for the whole family!
Not humane enough? What about the electric chair, then? Scorched flesh, eyeballs popping out, hair on fire?
Ah! The lethal injection! But doctors and nurses can't do this because of that damned liberal Hippocratic oath code of ethics rubbish.
So, let's take an untrained person. Jab the needle in. Oops, not there. Let's try here. Gosh! Hit an artery! Wait! He sprayed me! Is he HIV positive?
Worse. He could be innocent...