murder

Zambia’s court of appeal has dealt with a sensational murder and arson case in a recent decision that highlights two problems. First, the court’s judgment of 16 December 2022 upheld the death penalty imposed on a woman accused of murdering her gym instructor boyfriend by setting him alight. Just days after the appeal court’s decision, however, Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema finally abolished the death penalty, leading the justice minister to comment that from now on, no court could impose the death penalty.

A high court judge in Malawi has sentenced a gang who killed a man with albinism for his body parts, to life imprisonment, and recommended that they not ever be given sentence reduction by the country’s President. Judge Redson Kapindu said life imprisonment was perhaps an ‘even sterner’ punishment that the death penalty, since the prisoner had ‘only hopeless, painful years’ ahead of him, ‘… stretching out forever’.

Lesotho's former first lady, Maesaiah Thabane, third wife of the country's former Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, has been charged with murdering her predecessor, the former PM's second wife. Though Maesaiah was granted bail by the country’s Acting Chief Justice, an Appeal Court bench – consisting of three ‘outside’ judges – has now found the bail decision tainted by ‘gross irregularities’.