The "organic intellectual" and leader of the African Content Movement (ACM) political party, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, says he doesn't understand why the South Gauteng High Court dismissed the ACM's application for an urgent court interdict to force the SABC to broadcast the ACM's manifesto launch live and to give it rolling coverage.
On Saturday Judge Willem van der Linde dismissed the ACM's application for an urgent court interdict with costs.
The ACM and its 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 on Saturday.
Hlaudi Motsoeneng that now wants to take the case to the Constitutional Court after the High Court threw it out.
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 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 said 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 said that "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".
SABC News reported that Hlaudi Motsoeneng doesn't understand why the court dismissed his application against the SABC, saying "the court, they denied South Africans to have different ideas to compete equally so. It is very important that all political parties are given airtime".
