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.
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.
Since the death penalty was rarely used for sabotage and conspiracy, Justice Quartus de Wet sentenced the defendants to life in prison.
[5] 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.
[2] 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.
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.
[5] 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.
[6] 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.