1983: Phillipa Mdluli, enterprising businesswoman
July 2nd, 2010 Headsman
It was this date in 1983 that the last hanging (so far) in Swaziland took place — that of 48-year-old Phillipa Mdluli, for ritually killing the daughter of one of her restaurant’s employees.
The True Crime Library’s archive of worldwide hangings reports that
after the girl, Thuli Mabaso, was slaughtered, her body parts were removed and served up in Mdluli’s restaurant, where the bodies of small girls were considered by the customers to be a great delicacy.
It may be no coincidence that this last hanging occurred during the run-up to parliamentary elections later that year, and while executive power in this absolute monarchy had devolved to a fractious regency following the death of the previous king.
When the heir to Swazi throne came of age as Mswati III in 1986, he became known both for clemency and for centralizing power in his own person. Between those two phenomena, there’s not much room for politicians to productively demagogue the issue. And with a population barely north of one million, there are only so many cannibal restauranteurs.
Despite the death penalty’s long abeyance in the small kingdom, Swaziland has been obstinate about not repealing the statute; in 2008, it voted against a UN death penalty moratorium resolution despite the fact that it functionally had a quarter-century moratorium of its own at that point.
But Swaziland does still have prisoners on death row. In an apparent show of empty juridical saber-rattling, Swaziland made a very public international search in the late 1990s for a new “hangperson” (“Women are welcome … I therefore advise them to try their luck”).
On this day..
- 1778: Bathsheba Spooner, the first woman hanged in the USA - 2020
- 1350: Tidericus the organist - 2019
- 1798: Father John Murphy, Wexford Rebellion leader - 2018
- Corpses Strewn: The Murrell Excitement - 2017
- 1835: A white man at Vicksburg and two black men at Livingston, and five slaves at Beatties Bluff - 2017
- 1916: Trooper Alexander Butler - 2016
- 1752: Thomas Wilford, the first hanged under the Murder Act of 1751 - 2015
- 1914?: K., in Kafka's The Trial - 2014
- 1945: Louis Till, father of Emmett - 2013
- 1931: Peter Kürten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf - 2012
- 1934: Ernst Roehm, SA chief - 2011
- 1706: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the Kongolese Saint Anthony - 2009
- 1822: The audacious Denmark Vesey - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Businessmen,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Infamous,Milestones,Murder,Swaziland,Women
Tags: 1980s, 1983, cannibalism, july 2, moratorium, phillipa mdluli, thuli mabaso
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