What happened
It was reported that South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published its Draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy on 10 April 2026. The Cabinet approved draft was open for public comment until 10 June.
Later that month, News24 reported that several academic sources cited in the draft did not exist. On 26 April, it was reported that the minister withdrew the draft after an internal process confirmed that the reference list contained fictitious sources.
The minister said the most plausible explanation was that AI generated citations had been included without proper verification. It was reported that he said the failure had compromised the integrity and credibility of the draft and that there would be consequences for those responsible for drafting and quality assurance.
The withdrawal was formally gazetted on 12 June 2026.
What an auditable version would have shown
This was a draft policy, not law, but it had been approved by Cabinet and released for public consultation.
The problem was relatively simple to check. The academic sources cited in the draft either existed or they did not.
The sources reviewed do not show what checks were carried out before publication or how the fictitious references made it through the drafting and quality assurance process.
For each citation, the department could have kept a record showing whether the source existed, whether it supported the claim being made, who checked it and what the check found.
Where the gap was
It was reported that the minister said AI generated citations included without proper verification were the most plausible explanation. That is the government’s stated explanation, not a published technical finding showing which tool or person produced each fictitious citation.
A CitationVerifier is designed to check whether a cited work exists and whether it supports the claim attached to it before publication. A ConductRecord keeps the citation, the check, its result and the decision that followed.
Neither determines whether the policy itself was sound.
What governance should have looked like
It was reported that the department withdrew the draft after its internal process confirmed fictitious sources, and that the minister said there would be consequences for those responsible for drafting and quality assurance.
Where a government document relies on cited sources, best practice would be to check every citation before publication. For important claims the record should also show who checked the source and whether it actually supported what the document said.
The issue is not whether government employees use generative AI. The issue here was that fictitious references made it through the process and into a Cabinet approved document released for public consultation.
Failure Pattern: it was reported that a Cabinet approved draft national AI policy was released for public consultation with fictitious sources in its reference list. The problem was identified after publication, and the department later confirmed that the references were fictitious.
Governance Principle: where an organisation publishes evidence based material, it should be able to show that the sources it relies on exist, support the claims being made and were checked before publication.
The reference implementation of CitationVerifier and ConductRecord is open source. It lives at github.com/saffronandindia/headlights-oss, Apache 2.0 licensed and free to install. The repository is public now.
Sources
- Minister announces withdrawal of draft AI Policy (SAnews, South African Government News Agency, April 2026)
- SA’s draft AI policy officially retracted, carrying the gazette and notice numbers and the effect of the withdrawal (ITWeb, 15 June 2026)
- South Africa’s AI policy withdrawn after AI-generated citations found (African Business, April 2026)
- The withdrawal of South Africa’s draft artificial intelligence policy, an opportunity? (DLA Piper, May 2026)
- Scandal erupts over South Africa’s new draft AI policy which used fake references generated by AI (MyBroadband, April 2026)