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Death Penalty In South Africa
Capital punishment in South Africa was abolished on 6 June 1995 by the ruling of the Constitutional Court in the case of ''S v Makwanyane'', following a five-year and four-month moratorium since February 1990. History The standard method for carrying out executions was hanging, sometimes of several convicts at the same time. Mandatory death penalty for murder was abolished in 1935, comparable to the similar act passed in the United Kingdom in 1957. Before this reform, vast numbers of delinquents were sentenced to death without having their sentences carried out, with only 24% of capital verdicts being carried out in the period 1925 to 1935 (including 7% of verdicts against women). The reform was supported by Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who decried the draconian rates of nominal sentences, favouring greater discretion for judges which were ultimately brought into the penal code with a rule of extenuating circumstances, which largely were maintained into the Criminal Procedure Act, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutional Court Of South Africa
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction. The Court was first established by the South African Interim Constitution, Interim Constitution of 1993, and its first session began in February 1995. It has continued in existence under the Constitution of South Africa, Constitution of 1996. The Court sits in the city of Johannesburg. After initially occupying commercial offices in Braamfontein, it now sits in a purpose-built complex on Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, Constitution Hill. The first court session in the new complex was held in February 2004. Originally the final appellate court for constitutional matters, since the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, Seventeenth Amendment of the Constitution in 2013, the Constitutional Court has jurisdiction to hear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment (as a maximum term) can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884. Where life imprisonment is a possible sentence, there may als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boputhatswana
Bophuthatswana (, meaning "gathering of the Tswana people"), officially the Republic of Bophuthatswana ( tn, Riphaboliki ya Bophuthatswana; af, Republiek van Bophuthatswana), was a Bantustan (also known as "Homeland"; an area set aside for members of a specific ethnicity) that was declared (nominally) independent by the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1977. However, its independence, like the other Bantustans (Ciskei, Transkei and Venda) was not recognized by any country other than South Africa. Bophuthatswana was the second Bantustan to be declared an independent state, after Transkei. Its territory constituted a scattered patchwork of enclaves spread across what was then Cape Province, Orange Free State and Transvaal. Its seat of government was Mmabatho, which is now a suburb of Mahikeng. On 27 April 1994, it was reintegrated into South Africa with the coming into force of the country's interim constitution. Its territory was distributed between the new provinces of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantustan
A Bantustan (also known as Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of its policy of apartheid. By extension, outside South Africa the term refers to regions that lack any real legitimacy, consisting often of several unconnected enclaves, or which have emerged from national or international gerrymandering.Macmillan DictionaryBantustan, "1. one of the areas in South Africa where black people lived during the apartheid system; 2. SHOWING DISAPPROVAL any area where people are forced to live without full civil and political rights." The term, first used in the late 1940s, was coined from Bantu' (meaning "people" in some of the Bantu languages) and '' -stan'' (a suffix meaning "land" in the Persian language and some Persian-influenced languages of western, central, and southern Asia). It subs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FW De Klerk
Frederik Willem de Klerk (, , 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997. Born in Johannesburg to an influential Afrikaner family, de Klerk studied at Potchefstroom University before pursuing a career in law. Joining the NP, to which he had family ties, he was elected to parliament and sat in the white-minority government of P. W. Botha, holding a succession of ministerial posts. As a minister, he supported and enforced apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged white South Africans. After Botha resigned in 1989, de Klerk replaced him, first a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandra Smith (criminal)
Sandra Smith ( – 2 June 1989) was a South African woman condemned to death by hanging in 1986 for robbery-homicide alongside her boyfriend, Yassiem Harris. She was the last known woman executed in the country. In November 1989, president F W de Klerk ordered a nationwide moratorium, stopping executions until further notice. In ''S v Makwanyane'' in 1995, the Constitutional Court of South Africa The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction. The Court was fi ... declared that capital punishment be abolished, being incompatible with the provisional constitution of 1993. References 1965 births 1989 deaths 20th-century executions by South Africa South African female murderers South African people convicted of murder People convicted of murder by South Africa People executed by South Afri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Ngobeni
Solomon Ngobeni (died 14 November 1989) was the last person to be executed by the government of South Africa. In October 1987, Ngobeni was found guilty and sentenced to death for fatally shooting Mackson Kubayi, a driver of a Peugeot bakkie (a South African term for pickup truck) during a robbery in Nwamitwa, Transvaal. Ngobeni was convicted and hanged at Pretoria Central Prison on 14 November 1989. In 1990, President F. W. de Klerk declared a moratorium on the execution of capital sentences. In June 1995, in the case of ''S v Makwanyane'', the Constitutional Court of South Africa held that capital punishment was an unconstitutional form of punishment. See also *Capital punishment in South Africa Capital punishment in South Africa was abolished on 6 June 1995 by the ruling of the Constitutional Court in the case of ''S v Makwanyane'', following a five-year and four-month moratorium since February 1990. History The standard method for ca ... External linksSolomon Ngoben ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pretoria Central Prison
Pretoria Central Prison, renamed Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area by former President Jacob Zuma on 13 April 2013 and sometimes referred to as Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Services is a large prison in central Pretoria, within the City of Tshwane in South Africa. It is operated by the South African Department of Correctional Services. The complex comprises six correctional centres, including the notorious C Max, Pretoria Local Prison, and a women's prison. The new name is the same as the street name (renamed in the previous year), with both now bearing the name of Kgosi Mampuru, a 19th-century local chief who resisted colonial rule and was subsequently hanged in 1883. History 1948-1991: Apartheid era During the apartheid years, the huge complex was often known incorrectly as "Pretoria Central". In fact there were three separate clusters of prisons: Pretoria Central Prison proper, Pretoria (Local) Prison and a third known only as "Maximum" or "Beverley Hills". The latter was the u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. It covers an area of , making it the 17th-largest country. Iran has a population of 86 million, making it the 17th-most populous country in the world, and the second-largest in the Middle East. Its largest cities, in descending order, are the capital Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, and Tabriz. The country is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified by the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People's Republic Of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rule Of Law
The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica'' as "the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power." The term ''rule of law'' is closely related to constitutionalism as well as ''Rechtsstaat'' and refers to a political situation, not to any specific legal rule. Use of the phrase can be traced to 16th-century Britain. In the following century, the Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford employed it in arguing against the divine right of kings. John Locke wrote that freedom in society means being subject only to laws made by a legislature that apply to everyone, with a person being otherwise free from both governmental and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Constitution Of 1983
The Constitution of 1983 (formally the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, 1983) was South Africa's third constitution. It replaced the republican constitution that had been adopted when South Africa became a republic in 1961 and was in force for ten years before it was superseded by the Interim Constitution on 27 April 1994, which in turn led to the current Constitution of South Africa, which has been in force since 1997. Background The creation of the 1983 constitution was spearheaded by then-Prime Minister P.W. Botha. It was approved by white voters in a referendum on 2 November 1983, in which 66.3% of ballots cast were in favour of the new constitution. Provisions Among the 1983 constitution's most controversial provisions was its establishment of the Tricameral Parliament, a legislative arrangement that would permit the Coloured and Indian race groups to be represented in parliament on a segregated basis, and the abolition of the office of Prime Minister in favou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
