The leader of a left-wing political party in South Africa who has been a prime target of President Trump’s attacks on the country was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison after he was convicted on gun charges, a decision that places his political future in doubt.
The leader, Julius Malema, was found guilty last year on several charges related to firing an automatic rifle into the air in 2018 during a rally for the political party he leads, the Economic Freedom Fighters. Mr. Malema is a member of Parliament and one of South Africa’s most prominent politicians, but citizens are barred from serving as a lawmaker if they are sentenced to more than 12 months in prison without the option of a fine.
Before handing down her sentence in a packed courtroom in KuGompo City, the magistrate, Twanet Olivier, told Mr. Malema that he was accountable to the people of South Africa.
“That accountability stems from your position,” she said.
As the judge read her decision, Mr. Malema, 45, looked on grim-faced, and thousands of his supporters outside the court stood silent. Mr. Malema has vowed to appeal, and he may be able to keep his seat in Parliament while the appeals are pending.
Mr. Malema and his political allies have framed the court case against him as politically motivated and an attempt to pacify Mr. Trump. But prosecutors rejected that allegation, arguing in court that they were “upholding the rule of the law” and administering justice “without fear or favor.”
The case against Mr. Malema predated Mr. Trump’s attacks against him.
During an Oval Office meeting last May with South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr. Trump played a video that showed several clips of Mr. Malema leading large crowds in an anti-apartheid chant that called for the killing of white farmers. While defenders of the song said that it was a symbolic call to defeat the racist apartheid system, and while South Africa’s courts ruled that it was not hate speech or a literal call to violence, Mr. Trump pointed to the videos as proof that Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority, were under threat.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, which Mr. Malema founded over a decade ago, won less than 10 percent of the vote in South Africa’s 2024 election. The party is not a member of the national governing coalition led by the African National Congress of Mr. Ramaphosa.
Mr. Trump has created a special pathway for Afrikaners to go to the United States as refugees, while closing the door for almost everyone else. As a justification for the refugee offer, Mr. Trump cited falsely that Afrikaners were the victims of a genocide and that the government was seizing their land.
Mr. Malema and his party position themselves as supporters of socialist policies. He has called for a redistribution of wealth, including land seizures, to redress the theft of Black-owned property and other economic disparities created during apartheid, which ended over three decades ago.
After Mr. Malema’s conviction last year, his party said in a statement that the verdict had been “influenced by imperialist and right-wing agendas,” including that of “the racist right-wing Donald Trump.”
Before the sentence was handed down on Thursday, a prosecutor, Joel Cesar, argued that Mr. Malema deserved the maximum penalty of 15 years for the gun conviction in part because he was a lawmaker who seemed to thumb his nose at the law.
“His intention was clear,” Mr. Cesar said. “He was going to do what he wanted to do irrespective of the danger that posed.”
Laurance Hodes, a lawyer for Mr. Malema, argued that his client had caused no injuries or property damage and that no one had said they were in fear because of what he did.
“To send any person to prison for this single event would be shockingly inappropriate,” Mr. Hodes said.
Zimasa Matiwane contributed reporting.
John Eligon is the Johannesburg bureau chief for The Times, covering a wide range of events and trends that influence and shape the lives of ordinary people across southern Africa.
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