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Cape Town – Hlaudi Motsoeneng, former acting COO and current group executive of corporate affairs at the SABC, refers to himself in the third person and gives himself compliments as often as he can.
He has made the word "hullabaloo" trend, and raked in R11.4m in bonuses so far.
His outrageous quotes serve as endless entertainment to South Africans, but what comes out of his mouth is not all he is communicating to the world.
A behavioural psychologist told Netwerk24 that his body language showed him to be an anxious and paranoid man.
At the press conference this week where his new position was announced, he often mentioned that he believed people, especially in the media, had "agendas".
"Don't be malicious and mislead the public. I have been observing people talking including some people who claim themselves as lawyers. Are these people reading the judgment or do they have motives?" he said.
"The way he speaks, stands and acts indicate a degree of internal tension," Dr Denise Bjorkman said.
Fake smile, cold eyes
She said his smile was fake, his eyes cold, and he looked like "a pit bull ready to strike".
But when he spoke, he spoke about his confidence in himself: "I believe in myself and I believe that everywhere I am, I do miracles and I will do these miracles in the position I am going to apply."
And just like US presidential hopeful Donald Trump who refers to himself as Trump, Motsoeneng refers to himself in the third person as Hlaudi. "Hlaudi will never have stress. I'm a different animal. In South Africa I have more majority. Everywhere I go people support Hlaudi, worse in the rural area because I am a rural boy," he said at the press conference.”
The technical term for referring to yourself in the third person is illeism from "ille", Latin for "he".
Julius Ceasar did it often and so did Charles de Gaulle and Richard Nixon.
This list of "Hlaudi facts" has been doing the rounds.
According to a BBC article, toddlers are often illeists before they fully grasp the use of "I" and "me", so fictional characters portrayed as young children or simple-minded adults sometimes speak like this.
They quote psychotherapist Kim Schneiderman, author of Step Out of Your Story: Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life, who says thinking about yourself in the third person has been shown to be healthy, and something that many successful people do naturally. What's less normal is going from thinking to talking about yourself in the third person.
Bjorkman said he might also be doing it to avoid blame. He often used "I" to indicate his ego was hurt, she added.
Either way, he has been the subject of some good old South African humour on social media.
