--- title: South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake... description: South Africa's draft national AI policy was withdrawn after journalists discovered at least 6 of its 67 citations were AI-generated hallucinations — fake... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake citations found in the document | daily.dev og:description: South Africa's draft national AI policy was withdrawn after journalists discovered at least 6 of its 67 citations were AI-generated hallucinations — fake... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/4k2V05AMH.png og:image:alt: South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake citations found in the document og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake citations found in the document **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 3 min read · 3 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary South Africa's draft national AI policy was withdrawn after journalists discovered at least 6 of its 67 citations were AI-generated hallucinations — fake articles attributed to real authors in nonexistent journals. Cabinet had already approved the document before the errors were caught. A second incident followed days later when the Department of Home Affairs suspended two senior officials after hallucinated citations appeared in a cabinet-approved immigration white paper. The government has since hired law firms to audit all policy documents produced since ChatGPT's launch. An independent expert panel has been appointed to rebuild the AI policy from scratch. The incidents highlight a structural problem: LLMs generate plausible-looking citations probabilistically, not through actual retrieval, and a Nature study found hallucinated citations in 2.6% of academic papers in early 2025, up from 0.3% in 2024. South Africa now has no formal national AI governance framework. ## Content South Africa's draft national AI policy has been withdrawn after journalists at News24 discovered that at least 6 of its 67 academic citations were AI-generated hallucinations — fake articles attributed to real authors in journals that confirmed the pieces never existed. Cabinet had already approved the document in March before anyone caught the errors. Communications Minister Solly Malatsi called it an "unacceptable lapse" and a failure of human oversight. He noted the obvious irony: a document meant to govern AI was itself undermined by unverified AI-generated content. ## What went wrong The 86-page policy proposed seven new AI oversight bodies but included no committed funding for compute infrastructure. Critics questioned the substance even before the citation scandal broke. When it did break, the damage was immediate — several journals confirmed the cited articles simply didn't exist, and credited authors had never written on the attributed topics. This isn't a freak accident. LLMs generate citations through probabilistic prediction, not actual retrieval. They produce plausible-looking references because that's what the training data looks like, not because the sources are real. A Nature study found 2.6% of academic papers published in early 2025 contained hallucinated citations, up from 0.3% in 2024. The problem is getting worse, not better. ## Political fallout The ANC's parliamentary study group on communications called it "one of the most alarming failures of ministerial oversight" and is pushing for Malatsi — a DA minister in a coalition government — to appear before parliament, name the officials responsible, and detail what consequences they'll face. The incident has sharpened existing tensions between Malatsi and ANC parliamentary overseers. Malatsi has since appointed an independent expert panel to rebuild the policy from scratch. It's chaired by Benjamin Rosman, a Wits University AI researcher named in Time's 100 most influential AI thinkers in 2025, and includes AI researchers, lawyers, and digital governance specialists. No timeline has been set for a revised draft. ## The home affairs parallel Days after the AI policy scandal, a second incident surfaced. The Department of Home Affairs suspended two senior officials after AI-generated hallucinations turned up in the reference list of a cabinet-approved immigration white paper. The department has hired two independent law firms: one to handle disciplinary proceedings, and one to audit every policy document produced since ChatGPT's public launch in November 2022. Two incidents in under a week points to something structural, not incidental. These aren't rogue employees — they're senior officials in separate departments producing cabinet-level documents with fabricated sources that nobody caught before approval. ## The broader problem South Africa now has no formal national AI governance framework, which is its own kind of problem. The cybersecurity implications alone are significant: frontier AI models are accelerating vulnerability discovery dramatically, and tasks that once took days are taking minutes. Attackers aren't waiting for policy documents to catch up. There's a particular awkwardness in a government that can't verify its own AI policy's sources being the one tasked with regulating AI. That's not a reason to give up on governance — it's a reason to take the institutional capacity question seriously before the next draft lands. ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@theacademe** · 0 upvotes > Generative AI may mediate some work, but it doesn't obviate accountability. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Two Home Affairs officials suspended after AI ‘hallucinations’ found in policy paper](https://daily.dev/posts/two-home-affairs-officials-suspended-after-ai-hallucinations-found-in-policy-paper-ofesgauki) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The AI policy that AI broke](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ai-policy-that-ai-broke-q54corbhr) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Withdraw AI policy, Malatsi told as fake citations row grows](https://daily.dev/posts/withdraw-ai-policy-malatsi-told-as-fake-citations-row-grows-2m7brn1ok) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake citations found in the document","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh"},"datePublished":"2026-04-28T23:07:18.539Z","dateModified":"2026-05-12T13:32:48.351Z","description":"South Africa's draft national AI policy was withdrawn after journalists discovered at least 6 of its 67 citations were AI-generated hallucinations — fake...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/555fb46fb84fefb3f0b4b5985f6d86ef?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/555fb46fb84fefb3f0b4b5985f6d86ef?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"ai,llm,ai-governance","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"South Africa withdraws national AI policy after fake citations found in the document"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/south-africa-withdraws-national-ai-policy-after-fake-citations-found-in-the-document-4k2v05amh","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Generative AI may mediate some work, but it doesn’t obviate accountability.","datePublished":"2026-04-28T23:22:09.087Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/4k2V05AMH#c-yM4a5xALw","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"theacademe","url":"https://daily.dev/theacademe","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--C29_q-xW--/f_auto/v1756852849/avatars/avatar_wNAjl1VBaVx2CCjbkkb5h?_a=BAMClqZW0"}}]} ```