This archive report was first published on 5 July 2019.
Published on July 5, 2019, by AFP.
South Africa's firebrand opposition leader Julius Malema has lost a court bid to have an apartheid-era anti-riot law declared unconstitutional.
The law, used to suppress anti-apartheid rallies during white-minority rule, was used to charge Malema with incitement after he urged supporters to occupy vacant land in 2014 and 2016.
High Court Judge Aubrey Ledwaba ruled in Pretoria that Malema's petition was 'baseless and should be set aside.'
Malema vowed to take his case to the Constitutional Court, South Africa's highest legal authority, saying, 'We believe that it (the law) doesn't have a place in a democratic South Africa.'
The law, passed in 1956, allowed the government to ban public gatherings and gave the police the power to disperse prohibited meetings by force.
