Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (7822)	3/29/2005 2:40:27 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 22250

Re: South Africa under the Apartheid system... A Tribute to Percy Yutar --Judeofascism's unsung hero: Sunday 21 Jul 2002 > Insight Obituaries Percy Yutar The prosecutor whose ambition put Nelson Mandela and other treason trialists in jail Percy Yutar, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 90, was the apartheid government's most notorious prosecutor. He booked his place in post-apartheid South Africa's hall of infamy through his role as chief prosecutor in the Rivonia trial of 1963, one of the most famous political trials in history. Accused number one was Nelson Mandela. In those days Mandela was white South Africa's demon number one. Yutar was lionised in the media as South Africa'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. How much of this he actually believed is open to doubt. He was motivated by his ambition to become South Africa's first Jewish attorney-general, to ingratiate himself with the government and to show that not all Jews were revolutionaries. He gave every indication of wanting to send Mandela and co to the gallows although later he claimed that he had saved their lives by charging them with sabotage rather than high treason. He said his gut instinct combined with long practice told him that the judge would not hang them for sabotage, only for treason. However, the record of the trial shows that Yutar settled for sabotage only because he lacked the evidence to support a treason charge. During the trial he argued vehemently that the accused had committed murder and treason, not just sabotage. Yutar also claimed later that he had been doing no more than his professional duty as a prosecutor. But the record shows a level of vindictiveness that went way beyond the call of duty. To Joel Joffe, the attorney who organised the defence, Yutar gave every impression of nursing a passionate hatred for the accused as though, said Joffe, he'd been personally wronged by them. Yutar was not just prosecuting the case, wrote Joffe in his report of the trial, "he was entering into the politics of it". Throughout the trial Judge Quartus de Wet had to remind Yutar that "this is not a political meeting, this is a court of law". It was considered bad form for a prosecutor to cross-examine a witness who appeared in mitigation of sentence. But when Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country, leader of the Liberal Party and a man of hitherto unquestioned integrity and courage stepped forward to testify on behalf of the accused, Yutar announced that he would cross-examine him "in order to unmask this gentleman". Joffe called what followed "a degrading exhibition". Playing as always to the security police who sat chortling behind him, Yutar went out of his way to smear and demean Paton. There was no question of Yutar exercising any independence as a prosecutor. He was there to do the bidding of the government and the security police. He sang to their tune and was rewarded with some of the biggest political cases of the day. He had no qualms about using evidence extracted under the most dubious circumstances from witnesses who were entirely at the mercy of the security police thanks to the 90-day detention (without trial) law. In 1975 he got his ultimate reward when he was made attorney-general of the Transvaal. When he retired, Justice Minister Jimmy Kruger praised him as "the official with the highest sense of loyalty I have ever found in a public servant". Yutar was 52 when the Rivonia trial began. What observers saw was a small, dapper, balding man with no fingers on his left hand, which he'd caught in an electric mincing machine while working in his father's butchery at the age of about 13. His manner when he was winning was imperious and disdainful. When he was losing, his voice rose to a high-pitched, self-pitying whine. He was a highly qualified lawyer, one of few in the country with a doctorate in law. He had a reputation as an aggressive, flamboyant cross-examiner, but was also known as a bit of a bungler. When his big moment arrived, he bungled it spectacularly. The indictment he presented (with enormous theatrical flourish) at the start of the trial was so riddled with inconsistencies and anomalies that Justice de Wet, in the face of Yutar's near-hysterical pleading, threw it out. It was an unimaginable humiliation for him. Police in court had to rearrest the accused hurriedly. Yutar was born in Woodstock, Cape Town on July 29 1911, one of eight children. His parents, from Lithuania, were poor and Yutar had to sell newspapers to supplement the family income. He went to school at SACS and then read law at the University of Cape Town. He attained his BA LLB with distinctions in Roman law and jurisprudence. *Yutar joined the civil service where he was subjected to anti-Semitism "in its worst form", he said later. But the insults only fuelled his determination to be accepted and rise to the top.[] In 1944 he joined the staff of the attorney-general of the Transvaal and in 1961 was appointed deputy attorney-general of the province. Five years after Rivonia he became attorney-general of the Orange Free State. He mentioned with obvious pride that he was known as "die klein mannetjie met die groot hart" (the small man with the big heart). Yutar had no trouble reconciling his close relationship with the government and security police with his religion. He was a devout Orthodox Jew who attended synagogue every Saturday. For more than 10 years he was president of the United Hebrew Congregation, Johannesburg's largest Orthodox synagogue. In 1983 Yutar wrote to President P W Botha and members of his Cabinet asking that Mandela and the others jailed with him be released. He was ignored. In 1995 Mandela, then President, invited him to lunch at his official residence in Pretoria. He agreed with Yutar's story that he had played "a minor role", and had only done his duty. Rivonia trialists Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu were less forgiving. Kathrada dodged the lunch, and Sisulu commented that Yutar had "wanted to show the Nat government that he, as a Jew, was more vicious than anyone else". Yutar is survived by his wife, Cecilia, and son. Chris Barron** suntimes.co.za [*] That paragraph clearly reveals how "anti-Semitism" --as a benign form of bourgeois ostracism-- is conveniently "recycled" and used as the social gasoline to fuel Judeofascists' rise to the top.