But it also risked creating a backlash among Mr. Malema’s supporters, many of them young and jobless and with no niche in the post-apartheid economy,Canada goose parka who are drawn to his strident calls for nationalization of the mines that have enriched South Africa’s elite. And it raised the question of whether some of Mr. Malema’s more powerful supporters within the governing party would stick with him.
A local columnist, Karima Brown, called the suspension "the defining moment of the A.N.C.’s 99th year.”
Even with Thursday’s ruling, Mr. Malema might still be able to wield his influence during the party’s internal electoral process next year. In a statement,Trillium parka the youth league suggested that Mr. Malema would appeal the decision, a lengthy process during which he would remain the group’s president.
The youth league condemned the disciplinary committee for not allowing Mr. Malema and his four aides, who received shorter suspensions, to offer mitigating circumstances. It added that the league remained “unshaken and resolute in its call for the eventual transfer of wealth from minority hands to the majority of our people.”
The suspensions stemmed from calls by Mr. Malema and his aides for the overthrow of the government in neighboring Botswana,Canada goose expedition parka an act that A.N.C. officials described as sowing discord and bringing the party into disrepute. They ordered him to “vacate his office” as youth leader.
If upheld on appeal, the suspension would take Mr. Malema past the age limit of 35 for the leadership of the Youth League, said Fiona Forde, the author of a biography of Mr. Malema. “He will fight this,” she said, “but he has very little wiggle room.”
Riot police took up positions in downtown Johannesburg around the A.N.C. headquarters to pre-empt a repetition of the violent protests by Mr. Malema’s supporters when the disciplinary hearing started in August. Only a few Malema supporters turned out, standing across the street from the headquarters, where the ruling was announced to a group of about 100 journalists crammed into a vestibule.
But the suspense was palpable as the chairman of the disciplinary committee, Derek Hanekom, reading from an iPad, spent about an hour discussing the sanctions against the aides before getting to the decision on Mr. Malema himself.
“We don’t find joy in disciplining any people,” Jackson Mthembu, the A.N.C. national spokesman, said during a news conference at the headquarters. “But as you know, this is one of the tools that we have got to use to rein in any deviant behavior.”
The ruling came after a judge in a separate case ruled in September that Mr. Malema was guilty of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era freedom song that included lyrics calling on people to “Shoot the Boer,” or white farmers. In that case, however, many A.N.C. officials defended Mr. Malema, saying that he had a right to free speech and that the song was a figurative call to dismantle apartheid, not a literal incitement to violence.
While few political analysts had depicted Mr. Malema as a potential challenger to Mr. Zuma for the South African presidency, he had been widely seen as a potential kingmaker in the A.N.C.’s internal political maneuvering.
In the previous party leadership vote in 2007, Mr. Malema swung his support behind Mr. Zuma in a power struggle with the nation’s former president, Thabo Mbeki. But since then, Mr. Malema has shifted his support away from Mr. Zuma, whose aides feared Mr. Malema would support some new challenge to the president.
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