Malema sentenced to 5 years for gun-law violation

A South African court sentenced firebrand politician Julius Malema to an effective five years in jail after finding him guilty of violating the nation’s gun laws and other offenses.

The sentence of more than 12 months in prison without the option of a fine will disqualify him from serving as a lawmaker in parliament if he fails to have the judgment overturned. Malema was also fined on some counts. He’s filing an appeal — a process that can take years to conclude.

The KuGompo City Magistrate’s Court handed down the sentence on Thursday. The court convicted him in October for firing a weapon at a political rally in 2018.

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Malema heads the Economic Freedom Fighters, which advocates for the expropriation of mines, banks and land, and is notorious for starting brawls in parliament. It won 9.5% of the vote in elections in 2024, making it the fourth-biggest party and giving it 39 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly.

The case stemmed from a video that went viral on social media that appeared to show Malema firing shots into the air with what looked like an automatic rifle at an EFF rally in the town of Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape province in July 2018. He denied wrongdoing, with his lawyer arguing that he used a toy gun and blank cartridges, rather than live ammunition — an argument the court rejected.

Malema has been criticized by US President Donald Trump for singing a song dating back to the apartheid era that calls for White Afrikaner farmers to be killed. At a meeting with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House last year, Trump falsely alleged that the farmers were being subjected to a genocide and questioned why no action had been taken against Malema over his inflammatory remarks.

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