Malema, 38, brought the case after being charged under the Riotous Assemblies Act for urging his party’s supporters to seize vacant land. He and the EFF, the country’s second-largest opposition party, challenged the law saying it was passed during white-minority rule to oppress black people, and now plan to take the argument to the Constitutional Court, the highest legal authority.

The election of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress effectively ended apartheid in 1994, nearly four decades after the Act took effect. The legislation prohibits gatherings in open-air public places if the Minister of Justice considers they could endanger the public peace and was used to try prosecute Mandela, and other anti-apartheid icons including Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu. DM