Julius Malema's Sentencing is a Racist Persecution That Exposes Apartheid's Unfinished Business

As I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow EFF Fighters and Commissars inside the KuGompo City Magistrates Court last week, the air thick with justified and righteous anger, I joined the chorus that has echoed across South Africa since 16 April 2026: “Voetsek, Afriforum!”.

Your charges against our Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema, were never about justice. They were malicious, racist and politically motivated from the very first day. You dragged him into court not because a single person was harmed when he fired shots into the air at the EFF’s fifth-anniversary rally in Mdantsane in 2018, but because you cannot stomach a Black leader who dares to say the land must return to its rightful owners. I was there together with my fellow fighters to tell you so, face to face, because silence in the face of such naked racist prejudice is complicity.

The five-year sentence handed down by Magistrate Twanet Olivier is not a triumph of the rule of law. It is the latest chapter in a long and sordid story of selective prosecution that has degenerated into persecution, racial bias and the weaponisation of the justice system against the Economic Freedom Fighters and our leader.

A recent parliamentary question that I posed for written reply, laid bare the shocking irregularities that demand immediate investigation by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development. How else can one explain the revelation that State Prosecutor Advocate Joel Cesar was in advance aware of the not-guilty verdict for accused number two, Adriaan Snyman?

The very gun that formed the centrepiece of the state’s case against the Commander-in-Chief was returned to Snyman before the verdict was even public. Only one conclusion is possible: the Magistrate shared privileged information with the prosecutor in a manner that is not only highly irregular but illegal. This is not judicial oversight; it is collusion.

Let us be clear. This trial was never about public safety. No one was injured at the Sisa Dukashe Stadium rally. The shots were fired into the air as an act of political theatre at a stadium filled with enthusiastic supporters.

Yet Malema faces five years behind bars while countless other firearm-related incidents involving prominent figures and ordinary citizens have been swept under the carpet. The parliamentary question that I posed rightly highlights the glaring hypocrisy. Consider the funeral of Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association President Kebby Maphatsoe on 5 September 2021 at West Park Cemetery in Johannesburg.

Multiple shots – including from AK-47s – were fired into the air in full view of the nation, captured on national television. Not a single arrest, not a single prosecution. The South African Police Service looked the other way. Why? Because those responsible were not opposition leaders demanding fundamental radical economic transformation.

This pattern repeats itself across South Africa. At countless funerals, cultural ceremonies and political gatherings, guns are discharged without consequence. Yet when Julius Malema, the most consistent voice for the expropriation of land without compensation, does the same thing at his own party’s rally, the full weight of the state descends. Afriforum, that self-styled guardian of racist Afrikaner interests, was only too happy to step in where the police and the National Prosecuting Authority initially hesitated.

Their motive was never the Firearms Control Act. It was to silence the man who reminds them daily that 30 years after the formal end of apartheid, 7 per cent of South Africans – overwhelmingly white – still own 72 per cent of the land, while 81 per cent – overwhelmingly Black – own a mere 4 per cent. Only 8 per cent of that stolen land has been redistributed. The man saying “give it back” must be imprisoned. This is not only the legacy of apartheid. This is apartheid!

The selective nature of these prosecutions is impossible to ignore. The parliamentary question that I posed asks pointedly how the Department of Justice ensures consistency when high-level scandals such as Phala Phala – involving millions in undeclared foreign currency and allegations of serious criminality at the highest office in the land – have produced no meaningful prosecutions or accountability.

The answer is obvious: the justice system is not applied equally. It is deployed as a political sledge hammer against those who threaten the status quo. Julius Malema’s conviction and sentence are the clearest example yet of the law being weaponised to persecute opposition leaders who refuse to bow to the neoliberal consensus that has left Black South Africans landless and impoverished in the land of their ancestors.

Black South Africans have lived on this soil for over 100 000 years – long before Europe had kingdoms, long before recorded history as the West understands it. The land belongs to indigenous Black South Africans by historical right, by ancestral claim and by the blood of those who fought colonial dispossession.

The slow pace of land reform is not incompetence; it is deliberate preservation of white economic dominance. Malema’s call for expropriation without compensation strikes at the heart of that dominance. That is why Afriforum and their allies in the judiciary and the media have pursued him with such venom. Their charges were never about a gun fired into the air. They were about punishing a Black leader for refusing to accept the economic order inherited from apartheid.

I joined my fellow EFF Fighters and Commissars in court precisely to condemn this racist circus. We stood inside and outside that courtroom not as spectators but as witnesses to history repeating itself. We told Afriforum and their proxies in no uncertain terms: Voetsek! Your days of using the courts to harass and intimidate Black leaders are over.

The EFF will not be cowed. The Commander-in-Chief has called this sentence a badge of honour, and he is right. It proves that our message terrifies the defenders of white monopoly capital. While he appeals – and he will win on appeal because the irregularities are too blatant to ignore – we will continue the fight in the streets, in Parliament and in every corner of South Africa.

The Minister of Justice must act urgently. An independent investigation into political interference, racial bias and the serious irregularities in this trial is non-negotiable. The conduct of Prosecutor Joel Cesar and Magistrate Twanet Olivier must be scrutinised without fear or favour. If it is proven that privileged information was shared, both must face the full consequences of the law. Anything less will confirm what millions of South Africans already know: that the justice system remains captured by the same forces that benefited from apartheid.

South Africa cannot claim to be a constitutional democracy while its courts are used to settle political scores. Equality before the law is not a slogan; it is the foundation of any just society. When gun-related prosecutions are applied only to opposition leaders while funerals ring with celebratory gunfire and high-level scandals go unpunished, we do not have justice – we have persecution dressed up in legal robes.

Julius Malema’s sentencing is bigger than one man or one party. It is a test of whether post-1994 South Africa will finally dismantle the economic structures of apartheid or whether we will allow the courts to become the new enforcers of the old order. The EFF will not rest until the land is returned to the people. We will not be silenced by biased magistrates, colluding prosecutors or racist lobby groups masquerading as civil society. The struggle for economic freedom continues – in the courts, in Parliament and, above all, in the hearts and minds of the dispossessed majority. It is our generational revolutionary mission to achieve economic freedom in our lifetime.

To my fellow South Africans who still believe in true justice: stand with us. Recognise this sentence for what it is – a desperate attempt by a fearful minority to cling to privilege. Our Commander in Chief is not broken. The EFF is not defeated. And the dream of a truly free and equal South Africa, where the land belongs to those who work it, will not be imprisoned by a five-year sentence or by the machinations of Afriforum and a racist, compromised, incompetent white magistrate.

Voetsek to all who stand in the way of radical economic transformation. The people shall govern. The land shall be returned. Forward ever, backward never.

 A LUTA CONTINUA!

* Ambassador Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament (MP).

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.