Signal South Africa Withdraws AI Policy Draft After Hallucinated Citations Scandal

Summary

South Africa's Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published its Draft National AI Policy for public comment on April 10, 2026, with the comment period set to run through June 10. On April 26, 2026, Communications Minister Solly Malatsi announced on X that the draft was being withdrawn after News24 reported that at least six of the document's 67 bibliography entries were AI-fabricated, citing nonexistent journal articles and misattributing research to authors who never wrote on those topics. Malatsi called the episode "a major embarrassment" and admitted the department failed to catch the fabricated references before release, promising a redraft with "much more rigorous oversight." The withdrawn draft would have created new AI oversight bodies including a dedicated commission and an insurance fund for AI-caused harms. The case is described as a global first — the first time a country withdrew a national policy document after discovering AI-hallucinated citations — and has been compared internationally to Deloitte's $290,000 refund to Australia over a fabricated-citation report and EU agency ENISA's admission that 26 of 492 footnotes in a threat report were wrong. South Africa's existing 2024 AI Framework remains in force pending a new draft policy.