Did people safe during apartheid

Answer 1

Yes, South Africa practiced capital punishment under apartheid, although it was suspended (never to be resumed) in 1989, after F W de Klerk assumed the presidency. A few bantustans continued to practice it into 1991. Legal executions in South Africa was reserved for the gravest of offenses which could have been treated equally in other western countries, although starting in the 1960s, several executions took place which were considered to be political, i.e. as a deterrent for other opponents of the regime. Nelson Mandela was expected to receive a death sentence in the Rivonia Trial in 1964 for treason and sabotage, although ultimately the judge chose life imprisonment instead. At least one of the victims of a "political" execution was John Frederick Harris in 1965, who had bombed the Johannesburg Railway Station the year before, killing one person and injuring 23.

Mainly in the 1980s (but also in Soweto in the 1970s, for example), South Africans and foreign nationals were extrajudicially killed by the government, more or less deliberately, without due process, in order to silence opposition and deter others. Black resistance groups also perpetrated extrajudicial executions (read necklacing), and sometimes blacks were paid to do the government's deeds and thus lay the blame on opposition groups, so a certain gray area exists. White anti-government groups (such as the AWB) and individuals also committed atrocities (such as the murder of Chris Hani) which could well be labeled "executions", depending upon your definition.