April 16, 2026.

For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Halima Frost.

Making headlines:

Malema sentenced to 5 year prison term in firearm case

Kganyago cites Zulu War to signal preemptive inflation move

And, Pope Leo, in Cameroon, decries world 'ravaged by tyrants'

South African opposition leader Julius Malema was sentenced to five years in jail today for firing a rifle in the air at a rally, a judgement that could bar the prominent campaigner from parliament.

Soon after, the 45-year-old was allowed to appeal against his sentence by a magistrate in KuGompo City and released until the case is heard by the high court.

Malema has said he will go all the way to the country's top court, the Constitutional Court.

Malema was convicted last year on five charges after firing the gun at a stadium in Eastern Cape province in 2018.

Under the constitution, a prison sentence of 12 months or more, if confirmed after all appeals, would bar Malema from serving as a lawmaker.

That would be a major setback for his party, which has strong support among young South Africans frustrated by the racial inequality that has persisted since the end of white minority rule in 1994.

South Africa’s central bank governor referenced an 1879 battle in the Anglo-Zulu war in his views on how to tackle the coming wave on inflation from the Iran war shocks, implying a preference to raise interest rates sooner rather than later.

Speaking on the International Institute of Finance panel in Washington Lesetja Kganyago said the policy response should be to make sure that the shock becomes transitory rather than becomes persistent.

He used the analogy of the battle of Rorke’s Drift, where about 150 British soldiers held off thousands of Zulu warriors.

Kganyago said “we do not have that luxury of waiting until we see the whites of inflation’s eyes. By the time you decide to act, it might be too late.”

Kganyago pointed to the last inflation shock that followed the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Central banks that responded late ended up having to respond more aggressively.”

Pope Leo blasted leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants", in unusually forceful remarks in Cameroon today after US President Donald Trump attacked him again on social media.

Leo, the first US pope, also decried leaders who used religious language to justify wars and urged a "decisive change of course" in a meeting in the biggest city in Cameroon's anglophone regions, where a simmering conflict going back nearly a decade has left thousands dead.

Trump's attacks on Leo, first launched on the eve of the pope's ambitious four-country tour of Africa and repeated late Tuesday, have caused dismay in Africa, where more than a fifth of the world's Catholics live.

Leo, who kept a relatively low profile for most of his first year as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Church, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The pontiff sharply criticised leaders who invoked religious themes to justify wars.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

Don’t forget to follow us on the X platform, at the handle @PolityZA