Julius Malema was sentenced to five years in an East London court on Wednesday after a judge found him guilty of illegally possessing a gun and firing it in public. His lawyer immediately appealed the decision.
The sentence closed a case that began with a video from 2018 showing Malema using a semi-automatic rifle to fire several shots in the air during the Economic Freedom Fighters' fifth anniversary celebrations in the Eastern Cape province. The 45-year-old was convicted last October of five offences, including unlawful possession of a firearm, discharging it in a public space and reckless endangerment.
Magistrate Twanet Olivier said the shooting was not a split-second mistake. “It wasn't... an impulsive act. It was the event of the evening,” she said, rejecting Malema's argument that the firearm was not his and that he fired the shots only to stir the crowd.
The case has followed Malema for years. AfriForum opened a case after the video went viral, and the gun case landed alongside an earlier blow last August, when the equality court found him guilty of hate speech over remarks he made at a rally in 2022.
Malema, once the leader of the youth wing of the governing African National Congress, later formed the EFF after being expelled from the party following a falling-out with Jacob Zuma. The EFF went on to become South Africa's fourth-largest party in the 2024 elections, giving the verdict political weight well beyond the courtroom.
The sentence does not end the fight. With the appeal now lodged, Malema remains at the center of a long-running clash over race, power and protest in South Africa, and the next legal round will decide whether the five-year term stands.
