South African opposition politician Julius Malema has been found guilty of discharging a firearm in public seven years ago \u2013 an offence which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
In 2018, a video emerged showing the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader firing several shots in the air during his party\u2019s fifth anniversary celebrations held in the country\u2019s Eastern Cape province.<\/p>\n
He was charged alongside his former bodyguard Adriaan Snyman, who was acquitted.<\/p>\n
Malema was convicted of hate speech less than two months ago and often lashes out at the white minority in a country where, 31 years after apartheid ended, racial tensions still run high.<\/p>\n
He has called for the seizure of white-owned land and argues that more should be done to transfer wealth to the black majority.<\/p>\n
Malema was convicted of five offences, including the unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, discharging it in a public space and reckless endangerment. The first charge carries a maximum 15-year sentence.<\/p>\n
He was accused of firing between 14 and 15 live rounds on a stage in front of 20,000 EFF supporters, according to South African news site SowetanLIVE.<\/p>\n
In his defence, Malema told the court the firearm was not his and that he had fired the shots to rouse the crowd, the publication added.<\/p>\n
It took three days for magistrate Twanet Olivier to tell Malema \u201cyou are found guilty as charged\u201d. The case was postponed to January 2026 for pre-sentencing.<\/p>\n
Malema\u2019s prosecution came after Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, which has a contentious relationship with Malema and the EFF, opened a case against him after the video went viral.<\/p>\n
AfriForum was also among those who laid a hate speech complaint against the EFF MP at South Africa\u2019s Human Rights Commission.<\/p>\n
This resulted in his conviction by the country\u2019s equality court in August this year.<\/p>\n
After an incident where a white man allegedly assaulted an EFF member, Malema said: \u201cNo white man is going to beat me up\u2026 you must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The equality court ruled that these remarks \u201cdemonstrated an intent to incite harm\u201d, but the EFF said they were taken out of context.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African opposition politician Julius Malema has been found guilty of discharging a firearm in public seven years ago \u2013 an offence which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. In 2018, a video emerged showing the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader firing several shots in the air during his party\u2019s fifth anniversary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}