The Zimbabwean Senate has approved a bill to abolish the death penalty, a key move in scrapping a law last used in the Southern African nation nearly 20 years ago.
Zimbabwe is among four African countries alongside Kenya, Liberia and Ghana that have recently taken steps towards abolishing the death penalty.
The death penalty will be abolished if it is signed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The Southern African country uses hanging and last executed someone in 2005, partly because at one point no one was willing to take up the job of state executioner, or hangman.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s leader since 2017, has publicly spoken of his opposition to capital punishment.
He has cited his own experience of being sentenced to death, which was later changed to 10 years in prison for blowing up a train during the country’s war of independence in the 1960s.
