Is SA’s constitution too lenient on convicted murderers?

There have been so many massacres in the Eastern Cape alone that the country is getting massacre-weary.

People are making mental comparisons of numbers to decide if the latest one is worth their attention.

The country has already been through an incident in which 18 family members were snuffed out in one attack so the shock element has tragically been reduced to a 30-second “Oh, that’s terrible! At least only five people died.”

This did not happen by accident, it has taken decades of conditioning to get here – a murder rate that is not far from that of a country at war.

Official crime statistics show that towards the end of 2023, the country lost 85 people to murder every single day.

ALSO READ: Judicial Service Commission says not informed of Hlophe’s withdrawal [VIDEO]

A lot of studies have been conducted on why the country’s murder rate is so high. It is clear from the conclusions that the causes are deeply embedded in the country’s socioeconomic problems: poverty, unemployment and lack of guidance for the youth in the form of a family structure, among others.

But a problem that seems to come up repeatedly is that of offenders being ex-inmates. Several of the suspects arrested for the killing of the 18 family members in Lusikisiki have had a run-in with the law before.

One of them was out on bail for a 2022 murder. He simply stopped attending the trial because he moved to another area.

The first suspect arrested for the massacre, Siphosoxolo Myekethe, has been convicted for murder and escaping from custody before. It would seem simplistic to suggest that had Myekethe been sentenced to life without parole for his first murder he would not have come out of jail to allegedly commit a mass murder in which 18 people died.

But it is the truth. South Africa’s world-lauded constitution allows convicted murderers to be released on parole.

ALSO READ: Could Deveney Nel’s alleged killer be tried as an adult? Here’s what the law says

A study by the North-West University released in February 2024 shows that South Africa’s rate of parolees reoffending ranges between 86% and 94%. That is alarmingly high. Yet the constitution still guarantees every offender the right to parole.

It has become a bit of a joke to have a prisoner sentenced to life in this country, when even that is capped at 25 years, and they still qualify for parole long before the 25 years.

All sorts of academic arguments have been made to justify why jail sentences are so lenient and all make sense: the aim is to reform offenders and not to permanently remove them from society.

But every single murder victim who has died at the hands of a previously convicted murderer would differ violently with that line of reasoning.

It is the kind of reasoning that leads citizens to utter statements that at face-value sound populist and empty: “prisoners enjoy more rights than ordinary citizens.”

ALSO READ: Mother sues clothing store after 15-year-old ‘beaten and locked in a storeroom for 12 hours’

The truth is the constitution allows a convicted murderer like Thabo Bester time to waste the country’s resources arguing for his rights as a convicted murderer.

The beautiful reasons Nelson Mandela and his comrades had for crafting a constitution that guaranteed human dignity to convicted murderers did not include the right of those murderers to murder again.

There is something wrong with a constitution that lets a murderer to kill again before they are permanently removed from society. The constitution should serve its most loyal citizens first, before convicted felons.

If keeping a convicted murderer in jail for life means none of them taking part in massacring a family, then the constitution must change to achieve that.