Tanzania and the African Court spar over the mandatory death penalty and hanging: Kambole v Attorney General (Tanzania Court of Appeal, 2022), Ally Rajabu v Tanzania and fourteen other African Court decisions

In Ally Rajabu v Tanzania, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2019 found that the mandatory imposition of the death penalty and hanging as a method of execution violate articles 4 and 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In 2022, the Tanzania Court of Appeal in Kambole v Attorney General upheld the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty, a shoddily reasoned decision that misinterpreted the doctrine of res judicata to find the constitutional claims to be barred. In the meantime, Ally Rajabu generated numerous follow-up complaints against Tanzania at the African Court. Although Tanzania in 2020 withdrew its acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction over individual complaints submitted directly to the Court, cases filed by death row prisoners before that date continued to be heard. This case comment analyses both the Kambole decision by the Tanzanian Court of Appeal and the fourteen subsequent cases decided by the African Court, which all confirmed the holding in Ally Rajabu that the mandatory death penalty and hanging were Charter violations.