Public Interest SA condemns DCDT’s AI policy debacle: a consultation built on sand
- Digital Comms Team
- Apr 26
- 2 min read
Johannesburg, South Africa. Sunday, 26 April 2026 — Public Interest SA is appalled by credible reporting from News24 that the draft national AI policy circulated by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) may contain fictitious references that experts believe to be AI hallucinations.
If borne out, this is not a minor technical lapse. It is a profound breach of public trust.
Public consultations are not a box-ticking exercise. They are the constitutional mechanism through which the state invites citizens, civil society, and experts to engage in good faith.
Public Interest SA — like many stakeholders — has committed scarce resources, time, and expertise to interrogate this draft as part of its broader advocacy on Economic and Digital Inclusion.
To discover that the foundational document itself may be riddled with fabricated citations is an affront not only to that effort, but to the very communities whose inclusion such policies purport to advance.
The irony is staggering: a policy intended to govern artificial intelligence appears, itself, to have been produced without basic safeguards against the very risks it seeks to regulate. If the state cannot distinguish between verifiable sources and algorithmic fiction in its own policy work, what credibility does it have in regulating AI for the nation?
We call on Minister Solly Malatsi to answer, unequivocally and without evasion:
Were the references in the draft independently verified?
What quality assurance processes were followed before publication?
Who is accountable for this failure?
Why were stakeholders invited to comment on a document that may be fundamentally compromised?
This episode raises a more troubling, systemic concern: if such a glaring lapse could pass through the Department’s internal processes, what confidence can the public reasonably have in other representations made by the Ministry?
The burden now lies squarely with the Minister to restore credibility — through transparency, not rhetoric.
Public Interest SA further notes the emerging policy discourse around satellite broadband and market access, including debates involving Starlink. In a context where regulatory clarity and public confidence are paramount, any pattern of misrepresentation — whether by omission, haste, or negligence — risks contaminating critical national decisions with uncertainty and distrust — particularly where the stakes for equitable digital access are so high.
South Africa cannot afford policymaking that is casual with facts, cavalier with process, and costly to those who engage in good faith — least of all when it concerns the urgent project of inclusive economic participation in the digital age.
Our demands are straightforward:
Immediate withdrawal of the current draft AI policy.
A full, independent audit of the document and its sources.
Public disclosure of the drafting process, including all contributors and verification steps.
A reset of the consultation process, grounded in integrity and transparency.
Anything less would confirm that this was not merely an error, but a disingenuous exercise masquerading as public participation.
At a time when ethical governance is not optional but existential, the DCDT has chosen — astonishingly — to model the very dysfunction it ought to prevent.
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