South Africa’s Julius Malema challenges apartheid-era law

South African opposition figure Julius Malema is challenging an apartheid-era law used to prosecute him over calls to occupy white-owned land.

He is accused of urging his supporters to occupy white-owned land in a speech he gave in June, in contravention to the 1956 Riotous Assemblies Act.

A judge has agreed to postpone his trial while he challenges the act in the Constitutional Court.

Land reform is still a highly sensitive issue in South Africa.

Twenty-two years after the end of white-minority rule, most of the country’s best farmland is owned by a few thousand white farmers.

Outside the court Mr Malema told supporters: “What we are calling for is peaceful occupation of the land and we don’t owe anyone an apology for that,” reports Reuters news agency.

“The land must be expropriated without compensation.”

European colonisers “found peaceful Africans here. They killed them. They slaughtered them like animals,” he said.

“We are not calling for the slaughter of white people, at least for now.”

Mr Malema, who is the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), told supporters in Newcastle in June that white people can’t claim to own land because it belongs to the country’s black majority.

BBC 

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