On March 31, President Nelson Mandela said the death...

On March 31, President Nelson Mandela said the death penalty would not be restored while the African National Congress was in power because "slaughtering people" was not a solution to crime. Mandela was flanked by Pei Chun Mao, a Chinese South African whose husband was gunned down in central Johannesburg 6 weeks before. "We did not even raise the death penalty issue this time round, because we knew we would get nowhere," community leader Gino Feng said. More than 1,000 Chinese marched to the Union Buildings in July last year to demand the restoration of the death penalty after a 20-month-old boy was killed in a robbery. Feng said South Africa's 50,000-strong Chinese community would have left the country long ago if they were not bound to it by economic need.