By: Natasha Archary
A job is just a job right? You apply for a position based on your credentials and get paid for delivering the specifications of the job title. But what if there is a job that would make you go to war with yourself every day, would you still consider it?
Earlier this month, Sizwe Dhlomo came across news that Zimbabwe was looking to fill the position of public executioner at one of its correctional services facilities.
Two women were reportedly among the hopeful candidates for the job which would entail the executions of 66 of the country’s death row inmates.
Zimbabwe has not gone through with executions since the last two convicted murderers, Stephen Chidhumo and Edmund Edgar Masendeke were hanged in 2005.
Capital punishment is reserved for murderers who have been convicted under aggravating circumstances, and those sentenced to death will need to be between the ages of 21 and 70.
Women are however, exempt from execution, which is done via a hangman’s noose.
Unlike the US which executes its death row inmates via lethal injection, Zimbabwe carries out its executions in a much more spine-chilling way, by hanging.
With this in mind, the conversation on Kaya Drive proposed whether there’s an amount that would make one consider the job as an executioner.
For Juliet Joseph, it’s a firm no, as she would not want to wrestle with her moral compass and take the life of another, regardless of whether they deserved the punishment or not.
“I don’t want to play God. That’s still someone’s life at the end of the day.”
Witnessing a murder or someone’s death is a traumatic experience which can haunt a person for life, and to actively take a life as a job may bring with it a heavy dose of mental strain.
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Drive:
Many US executioners have spoken out about their experience, and for some, their actions haunt them for life, while others say that some executions are easier to swallow than others.
Instances where the crime committed was a catastrophic event claiming multiple lives for instance would be carried out without the executioner batting an eyelid.
The methods for seeing out the death penalty also contributed to the executioner’s reaction, with one former executioner saying he felt death by electrocution was more humane than lethal injection.
Jerry Givens, who administered the death penalty to 62 inmates in Virginia, US, said before he passed that electrocution is quicker than the injection.
Because there are 3 chemicals that have to go to work, with the lethal injection, it takes longer. You can also see the chemicals making its way down the tube and into the inmates body.
Givens died in 2020 after serving as an executioner for 25-years, and shared that there were many sleepless nights leading up to an execution, as he wrestled with what is morally just and wrong.
Also read: When you face yourself
