Zimbabwe hasn’t executed anyone who was sentenced to death since 2005. With the passing of the Death Penalty Abolition Act 2024 on 31 December, Zimbabwe has become the 127th country in the world to end death penalty.
This process began with the introduction to parliament of an opposition private member’s bill led by Edwin Mushoriwa, though some amendments were made by the government.
Other countries, too, have been moving away from the death penalty. In Africa, only seven of the 55 states in the African Union are “actively retentionist”, meaning that they sentence people to death and have carried out executions in the last decade. These states include Egypt, Somalia and South Sudan.
