South African Justice and Correctional Service Minister Michael Masutha says the country will continue to call for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.

Masutha was speaking during the exhumation of the remains of 13 members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) former armed wing, Poqo, who were executed by the former apartheid government.

The PAC members were sentenced to death for killing five white people at the Mbhashe River in the then Transkei in 1963.

On Feb 5 that year, a group of 60 Poqo members from Phuthi village, in Eastern Cape Province, attacked a construction camp near Mthatha and Engcobo, and killed five white people. Thirteen people were arrested and later executed in Pretoria.

Masutha pointed out that in present-day South Africa, the right to life is entrenched in the Constitution.

On Wednesday, their remains were exhumed at the Pretoria West cemetery as part of the Gallows exhumation project which was launched earlier this year to exhume the remains of political prisoners who were hanged and buried at the gallows in Pretoria during the apartheid era.

Masutha said South Africa is among countries which have called for the abolition of the death penalty and had entrenched the right to life in its national Constitution.

As a progressive force, South Africa had joined hands with many countries across the world in calling for the end of the death penalty, he added.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK