Percy Yutar: Difference between revisions

Percy Yutar was born in the [[Cape Town]] suburb of [[Woodstock, Cape Town|Woodstock]] to parents who had emigrated to South Africa from the ghettos of Lithuania, like the majority of the country's once -large Jewish community. PercyHis wasfather's oneoriginal ofsurname eightwas children"Yuter".<ref>{{cite andweb|url=http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Lithuania/ money|title=JewishGen wasLithuania tightDatabase |publisher=Jewishgen.org |date=29 July 2009 |access-date=6 March 2012}}</ref> As a young man, he worked in his father’sfather's butcher's shop.<ref name=scotsman>{{cite news |url=http://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/percy-yutar-1-613770 |title=Percy Yutar, Obituary |newspaper=The Scotsman |location=Edinburgh |date=2002-07-23 July 2002 |accessdateaccess-date=2 January 2014-01-02}}</ref>

Yutar attended the [[University of Cape Town]] on a scholarship, and in 1937 received his doctorate in Lawlaw. But despiteDespite his education, given the prevalence of [[antisemitism]] in South Africa at the time, he had to work, for five years, in a lowly legal position at the post office.<ref name="scotsman"/> In 1940, he was appointed a junior state [[prosecutor]] and eventually become Deputy Attorney General, first in the [[Orange Free State Province|Orange Free State]], and later in the [[Transvaal Province|Transvaal]].<ref name=virginia>{{cite journal |first=Emma |last=Rathbone |date=Fall 2013 |title=Mandela's Prosecutor |url=http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2013/fall/rathbone-mandela/ |journal=Virginia Quarterly Review |publisher= |volume= 89 |issue=4 |pages=158–168 |doiaccess-date=2 January |accessdate=2014-01-02}}</ref>

== The Rivonia trial and support for apartheid ==

Yutar was the prosecutor in the 1963 [[Rivonia Trial]] against [[Nelson Mandela]] and nine others. Yutar charged the defendants with [[sabotage]] and [[conspiracy (criminal)|conspiracy]], instead of the more serious crime of [[treason]]. Mandela and seven others were convicted, whileand two were acquitted. During sentencing, Yutar argued that the full weight of the law should be brought to bear on the defendants, but did not specify whether he believed the defendants should be executed or sentenced to prison. Since the death penalty was rarely used for sabotage and conspiracy, Justice [[Quartus de Wet]] sentenced the defendants to life in prison. Anti-apartheid activists condemned the guilty verdict, but were relieved that Mandela had not been charged with treason and would not be executed.<ref name=nytimes>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/07/world/south-africa-s-supreme-court-abolishes-death-penalty.html |title=South Africa's Supreme Court Abolishes Death Penalty |publisherwork=The New York Times | location=New York | date=7 June 1995 | accessdateaccess-date=1 May 2015}}</ref>

During the trial, Yutar brutally cross-examined some of the defendants.<ref name=scotsman /> Yutar even carried out a hostile cross-examination of [[Alan Paton]], who had appeared in mitigation of sentence.<ref name=virginia /> Yutar accused the defendants of telling lies to the world that Africans in South Africa were oppressed. In truth, he said, Africans were peaceful, law-abiding and loyal to the regime.<ref name=guardian>{{cite news |first=Gerald |last=Shaw |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jul/19/guardianobituaries2 |title=Percy Yutar, Obituary |publisherwork=The Guardian | location=London | date=19 July 2002 | accessdateaccess-date=22 May 2010}}</ref>

After the sentencing and conclusion of the trial, Yutar was lionised in the media as South Africa’sAfrica's saviour, the defender of civilisation against the forces of darkness. He encouraged this image at every opportunity by stoking white fears of an imminent bloodbath.<ref name=scotsman /> The minister of justice, [[John Vorster]], lauded him as a true patriot, while he was vilified by anti-apartheid activists, such as the [[African National Congress]], which he denounced as a communist-dominated terrorist organisation that had misled the black masses. South Africa's security forces held him in high regard.<ref name=guardian /> [[Benjamin Pogrund]], former deputy-editor of ''[[The Rand Daily Mail]]'' in [[Johannesburg]], confirmed that Yutar "was loved by the security police. They told me they loved him because he did their bidding. What they wanted, he did, including all his histrionics in court."<ref name=chronicle>{{cite news |last=Easterman |first=Daniel |date=2013-12-25 December 2013 |title=Mandela and me: journalist's insights into the anti-apartheid struggle |url=http://www.thejc.com/node/114327 |newspaper=The Jewish Chronicle |location=London |publisheraccess-date=2 January |accessdate=2014-01-02}}</ref> Yutar was said to be indifferent towards [[Apartheidapartheid]].<ref name="scotsman"/>

Years later, after the end of apartheid, Yutar claimed that his decision to charge the Rivonia defendants with sabotage instead of treason had saved their lives. In his last recorded interview, he stated: "If I had merely even asked for the death penalty, the judge would have granted... They would have been named martyrs and that would have led to a hellish revolution, and a bloody civil war. And I have not the slightest doubt that I acted correctly, and saved this country." [[George Bizos]], one of the trial's defence lawyers, called thisthe astatement lieself-aggrandising and highlighting his own role. The crime, as judge de Wet clarified in his closing remarks, was "in essence one of high treason", and the heavy political considerations involved in the potential martyring the leading opponents of the regime were out of Yutar's hands.<ref name=virginia /><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.nelsonmandela.org/uploads/files/12_June_sentence.pdf | title=Sentencing of the Rivonia Trialists | access-date=19 June 2024 | website=www.nelsonmandela.org}}</ref>

Mandela was released from prison in 1990. Negotiations to end apartheid culminated in South Africa's first free elections in 1994, in which Mandela and the African National Congress won a large majority, and Mandela became president. In 1995, President Mandela invited Yutar to a [[Kosher]] lunch, and allegedly said that [Yutar] "was simply doing his duty" as expected of him as state prosecutor.<ref name=guardian />

In the 2017 film ''[[Bram Fischer (film)|An Act of Defiance]]'', which follows the story of defence lawyer [[Bram Fischer]] in the Rivonia trial, Yutar was portrayed by actor [[José Domingos]]. Fischer and others in Mandela's defence team initially believe that Yutar's Jewish background would help their clients. However, in one scene, Yutar complains that Mandela's Jewish co-defendants (whom he calls "Jewish terrorists") have placed the Jewish community at risk of violence from Whitewhite South Africans.

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*{{cite book |last=Joffe |first=Joel |year=2007 |title=The State vs Nelson Mandela - The Trial that Changed South Africa |url=https://archive.org/details/statevsnelsonman0000joff |location= |publisher=Oneworld Publications |isbn=978-1-85168-638-4 |accessdate= |url-access=registration }}

[[Category:20th-century South African lawyers]]