being. Furthermore, it is institutionalised violence, that is in the present case violence permitted by the law, ordered by the judicial authorities of the State and carried out by the police authorities of the State. Thus, although the applicant did not suffer any severe or long-lasting physical effects, his punishment - whereby he was treated as an object in the power of the authorities - constituted an assault on precisely that which is the main purpose of Article 3 to protect, namely a person's dignity and physical integrity … The institutionalised character of this violence is further compounded by the whole aura of official procedure attending the punishment and by the fact that those inflicting it were total strangers to the offender."[1]
[34] The circumstances described above are present in any judicial corporal punishment;[2] they are certainly present in juvenile whipping in terms of section 294 of the Act. They are consistent with Mahomed AJA's summary, in Ex Parte Attorney-General, Namibia,[3] and that of Gubbay JA in S v Ncube, S v Tshuma, S v Ndhlovu[4] on the basis of the objection to corporal punishment.
[35] Whether one speaks of "cruel and unusual punishment" as in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution and in article 12 of the Canadian Charter, or "inhuman or degrading punishment" as in the European Covention and the Constitution of Zimbabwe, or "cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment" as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICCPR and the Constitution of Namibia, the common thread running through the assessment of each phrase is the identification and acknowledgement of society's concept of decency and human dignity.
[36] In the United States, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution is interpreted in the light of "contemporary standards of decency." These standards, it has been held, are not static but are continually evolving.[5] The relationship between "contemporary standards of decency"
- ↑ Supra note 35, at 11, paragraph 33.
- ↑ See S v Juvenile supra note 45, at 156F–H.
- ↑ Supra note 3, at 87D–H.
- ↑ Supra note 13, at 722A–D.
- ↑ In Trop v Dulles 356 US 86 (1958) at page 101, it was held that the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. In Weems v United States
