Wisdom of Solomon: Hallucination-free (hopefully) — new draft AI policy will be ready by March, says Malatsi

There were many definitions of digital sovereignty thrown around on the GovTech 2026 stage, but only one man had to withdraw what he thought was a landmark moment for the country and his political legacy.

As it turns out, it’s harder to etch your name into the annals of South Africa’s democracy than it looks, and even harder when you’re doing it on a group project.

“From my side, we were very, very robust in the feedback to the department from the very first draft [of SA’s National AI Policy],” the minister of communications and digital technologies, Solly Malatsi, reveals to Daily Maverick at GovTech, which opened on Monday, 21 September at Durban’s ICC.  

“And that’s why it was very, very disappointing when the AI hallucinations were discovered.”

It’s a full-circle moment because the draft policy was presented during a session at GovTech 2025, which is why we led with the question about his experience and what it taught him. His response:

“You hope – and it’s an informed hope, right? – that everyone in the execution of their responsibilities does the bare minimum ... because there are officials that have this responsibility and we deal with the substance of the policy, right?”

Then he drops the hammer of the shared experience and real future fear that anyone scrutinising policy now has to live with:

“And we didn’t interrogate the bibliography, because you take it as a given that anyone performing their functions ethically and honestly will not have an instance where there’s undeclared reliance on these technologies.

Just a sign of the times

“Relying on AI in research, in developing of documents, is only unethical when it’s not declared, right?”

He’s not wrong, which is why it’s important to declare that this interview was transcribed from the audio recording using AI tools.

But the incident highlighted a critical, almost comical paradox: a policy designed to mandate human oversight for national AI deployment failed precisely because of a lack of human oversight in its own drafting.

When asked about the lessons from the incident, he said, “You should never drop your vigilance guard — go to every detail, a comma, and all of that. And it makes the job just increasingly difficult.”

To his credit, when the fabrications came to light, Malatsi chose immediate public retraction over deflection, establishing a high bar for executive accountability:

“When [mistakes] happen, be transparent. Take responsibility and then also deal with how you correct ... to ensure that there is no repetition of the same mistakes, and also have credible intervention.”

And he isn’t stopping there; he is determined to rebuild public confidence and is running the rewrite through an expert advisory panel – led by Prof Benjamin Rosman of the Wits Mind Institute – to reconstruct a policy befitting the unique South African reality.

“I’m very, very grateful for the calibre of the advisory panel which is currently busy doing it. The goal is to ensure that by the end of the financial year [March 2027] ... we have a draft AI policy that we can present before Cabinet ... and one that can be free from avoidable stains.”

A balancing act

Looking toward the substance of the upcoming framework, the minister warned against over-regulation driven by panic, advocating for an agile policy that enables economic expansion.

“Making policy in an industry that is evolving requires us also to be forward thinking,” he explained, before taking a decidedly libertarian turn. “Too often the temptation can be: ‘Yeah, regulate now, regulate everything, regulate everything.’

“Don’t use regulation to stifle opportunity. Use regulation to enable sectors to grow. Use regulation to be able to safeguard.”

Malatsi had his own definition of digital sovereignty to articulate during his keynote address, but rather than treating digital sovereignty strictly as a security or protectionist issue, the minister framed it as an engine for socioeconomic development and fundamental rights:

“Digital sovereignty must be treated as more than just security or control issues. It must be viewed as a developmental issue that forms part of our growth plans as a developmental and capable state. We should be able to combine state capacity with the protection of citizens’ rights, maintenance and enhancement of national security, the construction of world-class infrastructure, progressive international cooperation, support for innovation and businesses of every size.”

That last line was, of course, a subtle nod to the ongoing fight to get Starlink into the country – only visible to those who have made protecting the sovereign right to impose redress policies that promote equity their life’s work.

Malatsi concluded his address by reminding public servants that technological tools are meaningless if they fail to improve citizens’ daily experiences or secure public data.

“Technology is not our destiny; our choices are,” said Malatsi, in his now familiar refrain. “And it is my wish that, emerging out of fear, we will make better choices for the benefit of our country’s digital transformation journey.” DM