Former SABC COO’s bid to keep R11.5m success fee fails, again

The Constitutional Court has dismissed Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s leave to appeal a ruling that he must pay back a R11.5 million success fee.
Accounting for interest, Motsoeneng’s total bill payable now sits at around R18 million.
The Special Investigating Unit has said that it has already recovered over R6 million for the former SABC chief operating officer.

All the way back in 2016, the board of the SABC came to the decision regarding chief operating officer (COO), Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s, efforts to secure a deal with MultiChoice.

That deal would’ve seen MultiChoice playing the SABC R553 million over the course of five years for two new channels on DStv. For his efforts, the SABC board gave the exec a R11.5 million success fee which was part of a R30 million bonus Motsoeneng received. In 2021, the success fee was declared invalid by the Gauteng High Court and the executive would have to pay back the money, with interest at 15.5 percent.

However, Motsoeneng challenged this ruling and took it all the way to the highest court in the country, the Constitutional Court.

This week, the Court made a decision on the matter and it’s not good for Motsoeneng.

“The Constitutional Court has considered the application for condonation and the application for leave to appeal and has concluded that the application for leave to appeal does not engage in its jurisdiction. Consequently, leave to appeal must be refused with costs and the Court need not decide the application for condonation,” Mpilo Hlongwane, acting registrar for the Con Court wrote.

According to the Special Investigating Unit, Motsoeneng’s payable bill, with the interest it has accrued, now amounts to R18 million.

“The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has already recovered R 6,476,515.21 from his pension benefits. The SIU welcomes and sees the Constitutional Court’s decision of 18 September 2024 as a positive step, as it clears the way to pursue the outstanding amount from Motsoeneng,” the SIU said in a statement.

The former SABC COO has yet to make a statement about this decision and its unclear whether he can repay the money.

We doubt that this will be the last we hear of Motsoeneng though as he has a habit of stealing the spotlight. This is after all, the man that had songs written about him because he forced local radio stations to insure 90 percent of the music they played was from local artists. That quota has since disappeared.

Motsoeneng also tried his hand at politics launching the African Content Movement in 2018. The party contested the 2018 elections, garnering 0.03 percent of the vote. In 2024 ACM tried once more and while it received slightly more votes, that wasn’t enough and its share of the vote remained at 0.03 percent.