Judge Willem van der Linde in the South Gauteng High Court on Saturday dismissed the ACM's interdict application and ruled that the editorial policy of the SABC cannot be called into question.
ACM with its leader, the famously matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng, decided to bring an application in the form of an urgent court interdict to try and force the SABC to give live broadcast coverage on Saturday on SABC2 and its SABC News (DStv 404) channel to the new political party's launch in Durban.
The caustic and egotistic Hlaudi Motsoeneng who lied about having a matric certificate and faked symbols on it, is a former chief operating officer (COO) at the broadcaster who was fired in 2017 after bringing the South African public broadcaster to the brink of financial collapse and inflicting massive reputational brand damage on the broadcaster.
The ACM, through its legal representative, Advocate Macgregor Kufa, argued that the ACM has the right to express itself as a new political party and that the ACM feels that the party's manifesto launch might be excluded from SABC news coverage or even be "manipulated" after editing.
The SABC on Saturday said that it would "vigorously oppose" the application and that it won't cover the ACM's manifesto launch live or give it rolling live news coverage but would cover it as a news story done by its SABC News.
The SABC said that it has not and will not be doing any live coverage of the manifesto launches ahead of South Africa's upcoming elections on 8 May for any of the new and existing political parties that have no representation in South Africa's parliament.
The SABC says in a statement that "no political party can dictate to the SABC how it provides political coverage of election-related activities" and that the South African Broadcasting Corporation "remains committed to covering the 2019 elections in an unrestrained, independent and impartial manner".
Phathiswa Magopeni, the SABC's head of news and current affairs says "this is an editorial decision that has taken into account, amongst others, resource constraints and equitable coverage treatment of political parties contesting the elections".
"In addition, as per Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) regulations, there is no obligation on the SABC to provide live coverage to any political party".
On Saturday afternoon, Vuyo Mthembu, SABC spokesperson, said in a statement after the SABC's court victory that the "SABC is pleased that the South Gauteng High Court has dismissed the African Content Movement's application with costs".
"The dismissal of the application reaffirms that the SABC's decision was the correct one".
