The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has denied the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) leave to appeal a high court ruling invalidating the appointment of controversial chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, finding that there was no prospect of success for its bid to keep him in the post.

“The application for leave to appeal is dismissed with costs on the grounds that there is no reasonable prospect of success in an appeal and there is no other compelling reason why it should be heard,” the appeal court held in a ruling made public on Monday.

Last year, Judge Dennis Davies ruled in the Western Cape High Court that given the adverse findings of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela against Motsoeneng, it had been irrational on the part of Communications Minister Faith Muthambi to appoint him as COO in a permanent capacity.

Davies found that she had been in no position to make a rational decision, as the information before her had been “muddled and unclear”, requiring in Madonsela’s view a disciplinary process against the then acting COO for lying to cover up his lack of qualifications and irregularly inflating his salary.

In May, the SABC’s attempts to fight the ruling encountered a first hurdle when Davies denied it leave to appeal, prompting the broadcaster to turn to the SCA.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), which brought the application that resulted in Davies’s ruling, said the SCA’s decision meant the SABC now had no choice but to remove Motsoeneng.

“Effectively Mr Motsoeneng will have no joy from our courts and must vacate the SABC without delay.”

“Mr Motsoeneng, Communications Minister Faith Muthambi and the SABC have been unsuccessful in almost all courts in which he has sought to keep his job,” the DA’s James Selfe said.

“He and his band of protectors now need to abandon this abuse of our judicial system and the taxpayers money into which millions of rands have already plundered.”

The case’s trajectory through the courts has had far-reaching implications as the SABC’s resistance to Madonsela’s directive of instituting disciplinary action resulted in an appeal court decision last year that confirmed the binding the nature of the Public Protector’s orders.

This set a precedent that sent opposition parties to the Constitutional Court where they successfully demanded that President Jacob Zuma be censured for flouting Madonsela’s finding that he was liable to reimburse the state a percentage of the public funds spent on his private home at Nkandla.