The Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane, gave the opening address to the hearing on the death penalty organised by Amnesty International this week.

Those who supported the reintroduction of the death penalty in South Africa as a means of combating the high levels of crime and violence were "grasping at straws", the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane said at the opening of the hearings on capital punishment in the city this week.

The hearings have been organised by Amnesty International to mark the 49th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights Day.

Archbishop Ndungane said it was fitting that the hearings should be held at a time when crime and violence was rampant in South Africa, and when opinion polls indicated that many supported the reintroduction of the death penalty.

"The call of a leading judge last week for its reintroduction has added further fuel to the fire, and the desire of the ruling party in the province of the Western Cape to hold a referendum on the death sentence is fresh in our minds," he said.

Archbishop Ndungane said that the roots of crime and violence in South Africa were many, not least of which was poverty. Another was the inability of the criminal justice system to cope with the volume of prosecutions facing it, and the correctional services system to enforce adequately the sentences meted out by the courts.

He added: "It is shocking that as many prisoners should be escaping from gaol and custody. Given the ease with which escapes are occurring, one has to wonder whether there is not a level of complicity from the very officials who are responsible for their incarceration. To believe that the threat of the death penalty is going to reduce significantly crime and violence is to be oblivious to the complex nature of the issues facing us."

Archbishop Ndungane noted that his own denomination, the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, had resolved in the 1980s that the death penalty was not compatible with the way of Christ. He said that many of the people who had swung from the gallows during the apartheid era were unjustly condemned by an heretical political system.

"Ironically, there is now no way to reverse the injustice meted out to them", he said.

He pointed out that it was ironic that some of those who were politically responsible for implementing the death penalty, or who had ordered the deaths of freedom fighters, in the interests of maintaining the policy of apartheid, were now seeking amnesty.

"Even if they are not granted amnesty", Archbishop Ndungane said, "they cannot be sentenced to death for any capital crime they may have committed. The same, of course, holds true for those on the other side."