Percy Yutar

Percy Yutar (29 July 1911 – 13 July 2002) was a South African lawyer who became the country's first Jewish attorney-general. He was the state prosecutor in the Rivonia trial in which anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela and seven others were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Early life

Percy Yutar was born in the Cape Town suburb of 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. His father's original surname was "Yuter". As a young man, he worked in his father's butcher's shop.

Yutar attended the University of Cape Town on a scholarship, and in 1937 received his doctorate in law. Despite 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.

The Rivonia trial and apartheid

Yutar was the prosecutor in the 1963 Rivonia Trial against Nelson Mandela and nine others. Yutar charged the defendants with sabotage and conspiracy, instead of the more serious crime of treason. Mandela and seven others were convicted and 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.

During the trial, Yutar brutally cross-examined some of the defendants.

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. Yutar was said to be indifferent towards apartheid.

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.

Legacy Yutar was a controversial figure whose "vengeful and forbidding image as a relentless opponent of the anti-apartheid struggle contrasted with his private persona as a gentle and devoted husband and father, who loved classical music."

For 11 years, Yutar served as chairman of the United Hebrew Congregation, a collection of Orthodox synagogues in Johannesburg.

In popular culture

In the 2017 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") placed the Jewish community at risk of violence from white South Africans.