South Africa’s opposition leader Malema is found guilty in a 2018 gun case

Julius Malema, the leader of the militant opposition, was found guilty by a South African court on Wednesday of discharging an assault rifle in public in 2018. The decision might result in Malema’s expulsion from parliament.

In contravention of the Firearms Control Act, the leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the second-largest opposition party, shot the gun into the air during the Eastern Cape province’s party’s fifth birthday celebration.

According to the constitution, Malema, who has been a member of parliament for more than ten years, would not be allowed to remain in office if he received a term longer than a year.

He had claimed that the gun was a toy and entered a not guilty plea.

Following three days of court proceedings, Magistrate Twanet Olivier found Malema guilty of recklessly endangering people or property, unlawfully possessing a firearm, unlawfully possessing ammunition, and discharging a firearm in a public or populated location.

Adriaan Snyman, his bodyguard, who was charged with providing him with the firearm, was found not guilty.
A pre-sentencing report will be released on January 23, the judge stated.

Malema’s party released a statement saying, “This proves that this was a witch hunt to target the president of the EFF and find him guilty no matter how irrational it may be.”

The white upper-middle class South Africans he regularly criticizes have long been enraged by his antics.

In far-right chat groups, his reluctance to quit singing the apartheid-era resistance song “Kill the Boer (farmer)” has been construed as an incitement to kill white South African farmers, who hold the majority of the land because white minority authorities have seized it in the past.

During a White House meeting with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, U.S. President Donald Trump demanded that Malema be taken into custody.