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After the sentencing and conclusion of the trial, Yutar was lionised in the media as South Africa's saviour, the defender of civilisation against the forces of darkness. He encouraged this image 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 |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 |access-date=2014-01-02}}</ref> Yutar was said to be indifferent towards [[apartheid]].<ref name="scotsman"/>
Years later, after the end of apartheid, Yutar claimed that his decision to charge the 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 the statement self-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>https://www.nelsonmandela.org/uploads/files/12_June_sentence.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=September 2022}}</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 />
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