South African politician found guilty of hate speech

South Africa

A South African politician accused by the Trump administration of being at the forefront of an anti-white movement was found guilty of hate speech Wednesday for race-fueled comments he made in 2022.

Julius Malema, who is the leader of a small opposition party, was found guilty by an equality court over comments he made at a political rally.

“No white man is going to beat me up and (I) call myself a revolutionary the following day,” Malema said at the rally. “You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act.”

Malema has previously been found guilty of hate speech in a separate case for repeating an apartheid-era chant at rallies that contains the words “shoot the boer.” The word boer refers to South Africa’s minority white Afrikaner farmers. The decision to find him guilty of hate speech in that case was later overturned.

Malema, who leads the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party, featured prominently in a video U.S President Donald Trump played a in the Oval Office during a meeting with South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa in May. The video was used to confront Ramaphosa with false claims that the South African government was allowing the widespread killing of white farmers to seize their land.