Recently, the Prime Minister was forced on a back foot defensive by a questioner who enquired as to when the condemned convicts at the prison would be killed.

There are seven young men in death row, all convicted for committing brutal murders. According to our law the punishment is death and the prison has all the paraphernalia to carry out this process.

To satisfy the enquirer, the Prime Minister explained that the apparent delay in the execution of these men is not his fault. It is not due to any reluctance on his part or any attempt to avoid the requirements of the law. It is really because the defence lawyers have appealed and the appeals process is taking up time.

For his part, said the Prime Minister, he, with his government is ready anytime, as soon as possible, to kill these prisoners. And as soon as he is able to do so four of them are at the top of the list to die.

I know that some people, more than a few were comforted by this news that the prisoners whom the courts has found guilty of murder might soon be put to death. There won’t be many people who will be shedding a tear over the miserable end of these criminals. Some people even express the sentiment that these criminals should be hanged like “dogs” and some go even as far as to say they should be hanged publicly.

I am not talking about the surviving victims of the unfortunate ones who died violently. Many of these people who rage about the failure or reluctance of our authorities to enforce the death penalty do not even know the victims or perpetrators of these murders. These are people who stand on the high ground of self-righteousness and pronounce death on the “dogs” who cause them shame by polluting the news with their murderous exploits.

“Hang them, hang the bastards, Kill the dirty dogs” These are the angry responses which come from these apparently outraged folk.

Self righteous hypocrites, who are so sure that neither they nor any of their relatives would be charged with a murder, that they feel secure in passing judgment on those unfortunate young men who do.

But whoa! Who are these murderers upon whom the law abiding self-righteous public passes judgment and sentences to death?

From the eagerness and routine with which we wish to dispatch these murderers to Hades, we give the impression that these young men are from some distant origin, from some nether-world, some alien race of people, not really welcome in our society.

When the white man used to rule our land, that was general attitude, black people were dogs

They used to beat us to death for things that we did that they did not like. They hunted us down like beasts and killed us and left us among the bush. They hanged us openly. We were the scum of the earth, dogs, whose lives were not worth living or sparing.

They made the laws which made everything we did was wrong and which prescribed severe punishment for whatever we did that they and their laws regarded as wrong.

They punished us to make us an example to others of our kind.

They did all these things to us because in their eyes we were less than human, less even than their cattle and asses. So hanging us was no big deal. It was just getting rid of “a few bastards, dirty dogs and pigs.”

The white man who used to rule us has gone but if we listen carefully and take a careful stock, we hear the ringing echoes of the same sentiments which they left behind, coming from the ranks of the “white man’s “dirty dogs and bastards.”

From the ranks of the white man’s dirty dogs and bastards have come rulers who use the same language about those of their own kind as the white man used on all of us.

That is why it is so easy to be glib about hanging our young men. As if these young men, the present day “dirty dogs and bastards” are not our very own product, right out of our loins, part and parcel of our selves.

I hardly think that the Prime Minister is fully aware that at least five of the young men whom we can’t wait to kill, belong to his constituency. These young men were all mere kids going to school when the Prime Minister was elected by their parents to represent their village. None of them was more than 10 years. They grew into manhood under the direct gaze of the Prime Minister. What is more they went to school and played with the Prime Minister’s right hand man, Nigel Carty.

These “bastards” who killed brutally and wantonly, these dirty “dogs” fit only for the gallows grew up with Nigel Carty, under the watch of the parliamentary representative.

Did something go terribly wrong with the social networking of this homogeneous community why so many of its young men could become such outcasts, that all we can do to them is kill them?

Of course they committed gruesome murders. I am not denying that, but what should be our modern approach to our own sons? Should we treat them with the scorn which the white rulers poured on all of us, or should we embrace them as our sons, wayward sons who went astray?

The white ruler used to hang the bastards but we who now rule are not white. We are no distance removed from the young men who went astray into egregious crimes. These young men are in fact our sons, not bastards, and we are supposed to be as accountable for their crimes as we are for the grand success of Nigel Carty. If we are willing to take credit for Nigel Carty, we must be equally willing to take blame for Buncome; and killing Buncome is not going to exonerate us from blame or assuage our guilt for the neglect which led Buncome and his cohorts to develop into despicable criminals in the past eighteen years.

If I were the Prime Minister, I would give Buncome his reprieve, take measures to enable him to see the errors of his ways no matter how long that takes, and at the same time, let Nigel Carty put into place a social network to direct his younger brothers in the village to become good citizens like him.

Otherwise if he hangs Buncome and the rest, we who were supposed to be the guardians of society must be prepared to hang with them.