The death penalty was abolished in South Africa on June 6, 1995, when the Constitutional Court found that it was inconsistent with the new Constitution.

The death penalty was abolished in South Africa on June 6, 1995, when the Constitutional Court found that it was inconsistent with the new Constitution. At the time, the South African Press Association reported, there were 453 prisoners on death row.
Throughout its four decades of institutionalized racial discrimination, South Africa had been one of the world's leading execution centres.
The last execution was in 1989, before the government ordered a moratorium on executions in 1990. Parliament formally scrapped the death sentence in December 1997, on approving the Criminal Law Amendment Act and setting out the process for converting existing death sentences. This legislation came into effect on November 13, 1998. Although it made provision for the death penalty to be reviewed and replaced by other punishments, up to 62 prisoners were still reported to be under sentence of death on March 10, 2005. The Department of Justice, whose job it is to commute the death sentences to life imprisonment said it was dealing with the cases one by one. Those still under sentence of death were being held in maximum security prisons scattered around the country. High crime rates, making South Africa the murder capital of the world, frequently led to calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty, but more effective policing led to a decrease in murders in 2004, according to government statistics.