Do we like Julius Malema?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Strong on gay rights and migrants, but a court-found hate-speech ruling, a firearm conviction under appeal and a habit of fighting the courts pull the score down.
Malema came up through the Congress of South African Students and rose to president of the ANC Youth League. In 2011 the ANC charged him over comments that brought the party into disrepute, and he was later expelled, with chaos at his disciplinary hearing. He co-founded the EFF in 2013, and the party won 25 seats in the 2014 election.
The big one on the harm side: in August 2025 the Western Cape Equality Court found his remarks at a 2022 EFF rally were hate speech. He had said “Tell that white man to try me” and that a revolution means there must be killing. The judge said it went beyond political rhetoric, and ordered a public apology and costs. The EFF called the ruling flawed, and Malema said it tramples on free speech.
Then there's the gun. Malema was found guilty in October 2025 of five firearm offences over a 2018 video of him firing a rifle at an EFF anniversary event. In April 2026 he was sentenced to an effective five years. The magistrate said the shots could not be justified as celebratory. He's out on warning, and on 29 September the High Court granted leave to appeal the convictions, so nothing is final yet.
He also has a habit of picking fights with judges. Parliament's ethics committee found he breached its code by retaliating against Judge Matojane in a 2021 judicial interview, and he lost a court bid to avoid apologising. He missed one deadline, then apologised on 30 September with a Sepedi proverb about correcting errors with love.
On the rest of the harm check, he is on the right side of some big ones. He led a 2023 picket against Uganda's anti-gay bill and told Museveni to “leave people the way they are”. In 2013 he told followers to love gay people. This May Day he told anti-migrant marchers they were fighting the wrong fight. Against that, he answered Trump's Oval Office video of him singing “Kill the Boer” by restating his position, not backing off. Where you land depends on whether you hear that as protest or provocation.
So: a politician with real convictions on gay rights and migrants who keeps getting into trouble for violent language and for treating the courts like an enemy. Two court losses in a year, one still on appeal, is a lot. There's good here, but you'd have to be comfortable with the rest.