Julius Malema and the gunshots at the Eastern Cape Rally

How the past can come back to haunt you – especially if you are the most controversial, and in some quarters the most dreaded, public figure in post-Apartheid South Africa!

The venue was the Sisa Dukashe Stadium in Mdantsane, in the Eastern Cape. The event was a rally to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters, the in-your-face party that revelled in the bold and garish.

The date was the 28th of July 2018.

On the 16th of April 2026, Malema was sentenced to five years imprisonment for unlawful possession of a firearm, after firing several rounds from a semi-automatic gun at the rally. He was sentenced to another two years for possession of ammunition. His lawyers argued that the firing was in celebration and was not intended to harm or intimidate anyone. The Magistrate’s take, though, was that Malema’s burst of fire was ‘the event of the evening’, in front of 20,000 cheering supporters, who were used to fiery speeches and edgy actions from their party leader.

The case was based on an old video that suddenly went viral on the internet. The case was filed by the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, regarded in some quarters as racist, a charge it denies. The context was sharpened by the recent uncomfortable interaction between President Donald Trump and President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House, where Trump made it obvious he believed the narrative of a few Afrikaners who were claiming there was an ongoing genocide against them in South Africa. A video of a Malema speech full of fire and fury was shown by Trump at the White House meeting, justifying his permission for Afrikaners to emigrate to the USA.

The suspicion that outspoken black leaders were being intentionally silenced was not limited to the EFF. Fikile Mbalula, Secretary General of the ANC, wrote on X , in the aftermath of the Malema’s conviction – ‘The main message we are being told here by the racist AfriForum is that if we dare stand up for black people…we will be targeted.’

Malema was unfazed by the prospect of imprisonment, even though incarceration for more than one year would make it impossible for him to continue as a member of Parliament.

Over time, he has been given to understand he would not be welcome in the USA under Trump’s presidency. He was recently banned from entering the UK, ostensibly because of his views on Israeli behaviour in Gaza. His party remains the fourth largest in the country, though in recent years it has lost some ground to other parties, including his old foe Jacob Zuma’s MK.

He enjoys great street credibility among young South Africans. That is hardly surprising, since he started his political career as a youth activist, and later became Youth Leader of the African National Congress. He was expelled from the party for his extreme views and his outrageous public utterances, and also because he fell out with the then leader of the party, President Jacob Zuma.

He is a man who has always been ready to sacrifice, standing on principle. It is speculated that one of the reasons for his party’s recent slump was his vocal Pan-African stand against xenophobia. Xenophobia is a prevalent social disease in his country. Malema believes all Africans are one and should be able to move about freely across the artificial borders drawn by colonialists on the continent to hem them in. They should be free to choose to live wherever they like. Unfortunately, the demography of unemployed, disaffected youths that are prone to listening to the hate message of extremist groups such as ‘South Africa first’ and Dudula is the same demography that would normally vote for EFF.

His land seizure advocacy on the model of nearby Zimbabwe may be controversial, but 45-year-old Malema may well be the most widely known, and most highly esteemed South African politician on the African continent outside the borders of South Africa. Strangely, he loves and admires Nigerians, who themselves are highly vilified in the xenophobic climate of South Africa. He loves what he calls the bold undaunted spirit of Nigerian people. Some Nigerians would remember his visit to Enugu last year as guest speaker at the annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association.

Some elements of his highly acclaimed speech in Enugu come to mind, reflected in his attitude to his present travails.

‘Support for the rule of Law is only justified if that law itself embodies Justice…’ Apartheid Laws against Africans were carried out with the full support of extant Law, he declared. His EFF, he told Nigerians from the podium in Enugu, was formed ‘to complete the liberation struggle…for the return of the land and wealth of South Africa to the hands of the people…’

As for Xenophobia, it was ‘…a betrayal of African people…a sickness born out of poverty…’

Malema is not a perfect man, and all too often he allows his exuberance to get ahead of his common sense. But there is no evidence that he meant to shoot anyone or incite anyone to kill anyone, at the Stadium in Mdantsane, just as, when he sings the old Liberation song ‘Shoot the Boer’, there is no evidence that it is anything but an old war song. He has not been violent except by word of mouth.

He has appealed the five-year sentence and is prepared to fight it all the way to the Constitutional Court. He may not be the favourite black man of erstwhile white racial hegemons who now complain, for the most part falsely, of being racially oppressed. He may not be the favourite African of Donald Trump, assuming Donald Trump has any favourite African. But he is a Pan-African patriot from South Africa – a rare post-Apartheid item, brash, raw, imperfect.

He is the genuine article. That should count for something, even in South Africa, surely.