AIFoPa-2026-0012
Date of Record: 27 Jul 2026
3 min read
Withdrawn Twenty-Six Days After Gazetting
South Africa’s draft national AI policy carried sixty-seven references. At least six described journals, articles or authors that do not exist.
The Government Gazette is the official journal in which the South African state publishes what it intends to do. On 10 April 2026 the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published the country’s draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy in it. Cabinet had approved it on 25 March and 1 April.
The document carried 67 references. At least six of them described journals that do not exist, articles never published, or authors who could not be located.
News24 reported the fabrications. Verification proved straightforward. The editors of journals credited in the reference list confirmed independently that the articles attributed to their publications had never appeared in them.
The policy was withdrawn on 27 April 2026. That is twenty-six days after gazetting, and rather less than halfway through its public comment period.
Throughout that period the document was the operative draft statement of national policy. Any member of the public who consulted its bibliography in good faith would have been directed toward scholarship that had never been written.
Minister Solly Malatsi did not characterise the matter as a clerical difficulty. “This failure is not a mere technical issue but has compromised the integrity and credibility of the draft policy,” he said. He described the inclusion of AI-generated sources without verification as “an unacceptable lapse”. He observed that “vigilant human oversight over the use of artificial intelligence is critical”.
The department acknowledged falling short of the institutional standards expected of South Africa’s digital policy leadership.
The Bureau records the following with the flatness the archive requires. An artificial intelligence generated fictitious sources. It did so in the document setting out the Republic of South Africa’s national policy on artificial intelligence. No existing classification covered it. One was created.