As much as the South African Police Services are trying to arrest criminals and bring them to book, they are fighting a hopeless battle as long as the judicial system in this country is not drastically revised. Appropriate punishment of criminals, that would serve as clear deterrents to other criminals, is essential to bring back some semblance of law and order to this trouble-torn land. The present tidal wave of crime pounding our society has rendered human life extremely cheap and worthless. Human life has to be accorded the respect it deserves. Those individuals in society that do not show respect towards the lives of fellow beings, themselves do not deserve the sacred and precious gift of life.
Murder is the antithesis of life.
The murderer is an aggressor against the individual and society. Protecting the murderer by abolishing the death sentence is aggression against the society and mankind at large. One serious danger of abolishing capital punishment is that it could well lead to retaliatory attacks by frustrated relatives and friends of the victim. This seeking of revenge and retaliation could further lead to faction fights and gang warfare and this would result in murder and mayhem of a far greater scale. This in turn could result in the total breakdown of law and order.