The execution of Janice Bronwyn Linden highlights the need for women to work together to prevent situations where they would be driven to commit crime, the ANC Women's League said on Tuesday.
"Women need to work together to create jobs and help other women out of situations of poverty to prevent this from happening again," African National Congress Women's League spokeswoman Troy Martens said in a statement.
"This event highlights the need to take women out of situations of poverty and desperation where they feel they have no option but to resort to crime."
Linden, 35, from KwaZulu-Natal, was executed by lethal injection in China on Monday for drug smuggling.
She was arrested in Guangzhou in November 2008 after she was caught with three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine (tik) in her luggage. She was convicted of the crime in 2009.
Martens said Linden’s death had caused pain to a nation that did not believe in corporal punishment as a form of justice.
On Monday the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) said the Chinese should have considered its trade relations with South Africa before executing Linden.
"With the current growing trade relations between China and South Africa, one would have hoped this relationship would have influenced China differently," IFP MP Ben Skosana said in a statement.
The Democratic Alliance said the government had not done enough to prevent the execution.
"Whilst we firmly believe that drug mules should be punished for their offences, this punishment does not fit the crime," MP Stevens Mokgalapa said in a statement.
The SA Human Rights Commission said government's foreign policy was focused more on trading with China, and it had failed to consider human rights.
"When South Africa establishes trade and diplomatic relations with any country, it is absolutely imperative that human rights principles form one of the primary pillars of these relations," spokesman Vincent Moaga said.
"Her [Linden's] sentence is a violation of commonly accepted basic human rights, particularly the rights to life and dignity." (Sapa)
