During apartheid, the death penalty was not merely a criminal punishment but a tool for political intimidation.

: Sentences were heavily biased; data from 1982–1983 shows that 95% of those sentenced to death were Black. Black activists were often executed for killing white police officers, while white individuals rarely faced the same penalty for killing Black citizens. 2. High-Profile Cases and Campaigns (1986)

: In the mid-1980s, the state increasingly used the "common purpose" legal doctrine to sentence groups of activists to death, even if they were not directly responsible for a specific killing.