South African opposition leader Julius Malema has been convicted for illegally firing a firearm during a public gathering, an incident that dates back seven years.
The case stems from a 2018 video showing the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader shooting multiple rounds into the air while on stage at the party’s fifth anniversary celebrations in the Eastern Cape.
Malema faced trial alongside his former bodyguard, Adriaan Snyman, who was cleared of all charges. The politician, however, was convicted on five counts, including unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, discharging a weapon in a public place, and reckless endangerment. The most serious of these charges carries a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
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According to reports from SowetanLIVE, Malema was accused of firing 14 to 15 live rounds before a crowd of about 20,000 supporters. In court, he argued the weapon did not belong to him and that the shots were meant to excite the audience.
After three days of deliberation, magistrate Twanet Olivier announced: “You are found guilty as charged.” The matter has been postponed until January 2026 for pre-sentencing procedures.
This ruling marks Malema’s second conviction in under two months. In August, South Africa’s equality court found him guilty of hate speech following remarks he made in response to an alleged assault on an EFF member by a white man. At the time, Malema said: “No white man is going to beat me up… you must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing.”
The court determined his words amounted to incitement, though the EFF insists the comments were misinterpreted.
Both cases were driven in part by AfriForum, an Afrikaner lobby group that has a long-standing adversarial relationship with Malema and the EFF. AfriForum initially opened the firearm case after the 2018 video circulated online and was also among those who lodged the hate speech complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
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