The charges related to an incident in 2018 when a video emerged showing Malema using a semi-automatic rifle to fire several shots in the air during his party’s fifth anniversary celebrations held in the country’s Eastern Cape province.
In his defence, Malema told the court the firearm was not his and that he had fired the shots to rouse the crowd, South African news site SowetanLIVE reported at the time.
After being found guilty last October, Malema told his supporters outside the court in East London that “going to prison or death is a badge of honour”.
“We cannot be scared of prison [or] to die for the revolution. Whatever they want to do, they must know we will never retreat.”
He also vowed to take a challenge to the judgment up to South Africa’s highest court, the Constitutional Court.
Malema’s prosecution came when Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, which has a contentious relationship with him and the EFF, opened a case against Malema after the video went viral.
