Considering how many of the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) recent decisions have been political own goals for the ANC government, one could almost believe Shaun Abrahams’s repeated protestations that the NPA does not take political factors into account. Just take the decision to charge EFF leader Julius Malema under one of the apartheid era’s more notorious and odious pieces of repressive legislation. The politician was charged under the Riotous Assemblies Act for inciting followers to commit the crime of trespass when he said they should occupy vacant land. The preamble to the 1956 Riotous Assemblies Act says its purpose is "to consolidate the laws relating to riotous assemblies and the prohibition of the engendering of feelings of hostility between the European and non-European inhabitants of the Republic".
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