For Communications Minister Solly Malatsi, the withdrawal of the Draft National AI Policy was a sobering necessity, exposing a severe lack of quality assurance in the state’s policymaking machinery.
THE irony was palpable when South Africa’s Draft National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy was abruptly withdrawn on April 26. A document designed to establish the country as an ethical leader in AI governance was found to be riddled with fictitious, AI-hallucinated academic citations.
For Communications Minister Solly Malatsi, the withdrawal of the Draft National AI Policy was a sobering necessity, exposing a severe lack of quality assurance in the state’s policymaking machinery.
The embarrassing debacle, which prompted the appointment of an Independent Expert Review Panel chaired by Professor Benjamin Rosman, serves as a stark reminder: While the state tries to regulate the future using the hallucinations it seeks to police, it loses credibility.
The real AI revolution in South Africa is not happening in committee rooms but is being driven by rapid, decentralised execution on the ground.
