Under white minority rule, the apartheid-era National...

Under white minority rule, the apartheid-era National Party, the New National Party's (NNP) predecessor, executed an average of about 100 people a year in the 1980s, peaking at 187 in 1987 when 21 people were hanged in a single week at Pretoria's notorious central prison. Throughout four decades of institutionalized racial discrimination, South Africa became one of the world's leading execution centers until the abolition of the mandatory death penalty in 1990 and its formal scrapping by Parliament in 1997. Following the decision of the Constitutional Court declaring capital punishment unconstitutional, it was necessary to promote legislation to convert the sentences of those prisoners condemned to death at the time, to appropriate sentences. The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1997 was passed by Parliament and brought into operation on November 13, 1998. The Act provides for the following procedure to be followed: (a) The cases of those who have been sentenced to death and have exhausted all the recognized legal procedures pertaining to appeal of review, must be referred to the court in which the sentences were imposed. (b) The matter must be considered by the judge who imposed the original sentence or, if he or she is not available, the Judge President of the particular court must designate another judge of that court to deal with the matter. (c) The court must consider written argument on behalf of those persons and the prosecuting authority. (d) The court may, however, if necessary, hear oral argument on the written arguments. (e) The court must thereafter advise the President on an appropriate sentence and, if applicable, on the date to which the sentence must be antedated. (f) The President must then set aside the death sentence and substitute therefor the punishment advised by the court.