South Africa's Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, is taking structured steps to restore credibility to the country's national artificial intelligence governance framework. The ministry pulled its initial policy document in April 2026 after discovering that unverified AI-generated citations and fabricated academic references had been included without proper human verification.
Addressing Internal Oversight and Consequence Management Following the withdrawal of the original draft policy, Minister Malatsi confirmed that internal disciplinary proceedings are actively underway regarding an official involved in the drafting and quality assurance process. The ministry emphasized that maintaining strict human oversight remains essential when utilizing artificial intelligence tools across government and policy-making procedures.
Disciplinary Action: Disciplinary proceedings continue against a departmental official following the citation errors.
Transparent Accountability: The department chose immediate public retraction over non-disclosure to uphold public trust and executive accountability.
Human Oversight Standards: The incident underscores the risks of unsupervised generative AI usage within public sector drafting.
Expert Panel and Revised Drafting Timeline To establish a verified policy document, the ministry appointed an advisory panel led by Professor Benjamin Rosman from the Wits Mind Institute. The panel is tasked with reconstructing a national policy framework tailored to South Africa's digital ecosystem.
To explore further analysis on artificial intelligence governance, regulatory policy, and digital transformation across Africa, visit AfroTech Horizon.
Strategic Focus on Enabling Regulation Minister Malatsi noted that the revised draft aims for presentation to the Cabinet by the end of the financial year in March 2027. The department seeks an enabling regulatory framework that balances consumer safeguards and digital sovereignty with sectoral innovation and growth.
