Controversial former SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng will no longer contest the upcoming national and general elections countrywide.
Motsoeneng has, through his nascent party, African Content Movement (ACM) contested the 2019 national and provincial election countrywide but failed to secure a seat in the National Assembly.
In a conversation with Sunday World Engage this week, Motsoeneng revealed that instead of being all over the place, the ACM will be found in the national ballot and the Free State ballot only.
In this way, Motsoeneng says it would be a walk in the park to amass the approximately 45 000 votes he needs to secure a seat in parliament.
Motsoeneng said he had built a solid foundation and support base in his home municipality of Maluti-a-Phofung, where he has a councillor seat in the local council. Other parties can try their luck to take him on anywhere else but Maluti-a-Phofung and Free State, he boasted.
Even his home boy Ace Magashule and his newly formed African Congress for Transformation will be left eating dust in the Free State, he said
His change of strategy was prompted by his first attempt at national and provincial elections in 2019, which flopped spectacularly.
“Stretching your party all over without an established base and serious financial muscle is foolhardy, and Motsoeneng will not do that with his African Content Movement. Once bitten, twice shy.
“I am going to contest Free State and national only because I want to build a foundation in my province, especially where I come from in Maluti-a-Phofung,” he said.
“If I do that, I believe I will be able to be in the national parliament and in the Free State provincial legislature. But I may even take Free State over with an outright majority and run that province.”
The flamboyant Motsoeneng said he started the party just to shake things up, but “I was not serious”.
However, how it performed in the last local government elections showed him that he was onto something.
Said a chuckling Motsoeneng: “Actually, when I formed the party, I was not serious. And I did not know this animal called politics and mobilising, going up and down. I did not know those things.
“But now I can say I have arrived because I have had the benefit of hindsight and sitting down, analysing everything, and realised what I need to do for me to be stronger, hence the strategy to focus at home.”
The overconfident politician said only he was the only politician with the brains to change South Africa and take it to the greatest heights.
Everyone else from the ANC, DA, EFF, and the whole lot combined were far inferior to his intellectual prowess, he claimed.
Motsoeneng’s party did not have a political ideology it identified itself with, he said, because in his view, such things were overrated English words that mean nothing.
His goal is to deliver on all the needs of South Africans, and he believes his forceful implementation track record at the SABC will earn him favour with the electorate.
“I do not believe in the so-called manifesto. Other parties believe they have a better manifesto than others, that is nonsensical. All of us want bread. All of us want services like water and electricity. All of us want proper roads and employment. Those are the issues. But many politicians believe that when they play with English, they have arrived,” he charged.
“I am simple because life is simple, and I know what people want. In this country, there is no one who is going to change South Africa, it is only Hlaudi. I’m decisive and I care for our people.”
