Generative AI undermining democracy in South Africa
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa is warning that the rise of generative AI accessibility and functionality provides significant risks ahead of the 2026 Local Government Elections.
A key concern for the Commission, the country’s electoral process watchdog, is the use of generative AI and chatbots to quickly and easily create hyper-local disinformation campaigns ahead of, and during, the municipal elections.
“The primary challenge of 2026 is the rise of Generative AI and its application in ‘hyper-local’ contexts. We are seeing a shift from broad national untruths to ward-specific deceptions,” warns IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya per state media.
He says that the IEC is actively looking to counteract this rise in misinformation with specific strategies freshly established for the 2026 elections, which for some parts of the country are going to be hotly contested. For example, the mayoral race for the City of Johannesburg is looking to be the most important and closely monitored in years.
“As identified by the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF), we expect a ‘flurry of deepfakes’ in these municipal elections,” he said.
He was speaking at the Disinformation Dialogue 2026 conference held in Cape Town this week, and added that the most vulnerable targets to generative AI-made deception in terms of voting processes were manipulation to the voters’ roll, the transportation of ballot boxes and the manual tallying of votes at stations.
Generative AI chatbots on platforms like X, ChatGPT and others can quickly and easily produce fake images and videos claiming the mishandling of the election process in order to incite users online and spread disinformation narratives.
“Disinformation targets these points because they involve human elements that can be misrepresented,” Moepya explained.
New digital tools like direct-to-citizen verification are in the works. This enables voters to confirm ward boundaries and registration status through zero-rated digital portals.
Another method is the linking of community radio stations and youth networks to fact-checking hubs aimed at countering false information at a community level. The IEC is also encouraging media houses to provide more clarity on the auditing of results to reduce conspiracy theories.
Additionally, it is cracking down on those who intentionally spread misinformation online with new legal mechanisms introduced in the Cybercrimes Act and the Electoral Code of Conduct.
Election podcast to attract younger voters
In December, the IEC said that it would launch a new podcast series in the hopes of attracting younger voters to register for the 2026 local government elections.
“Young people born in the 2000s and 2010s do not experience democracy in the same way their parents did,” said Prof. Gitanjali Singh, academic leader in Information Systems and Technology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, when explaining the rationale for the podcasts.
“They live online. They consume news online. They engage with institutions online. And increasingly, their expectations of government—responsiveness, transparency, convenience, are shaped entirely by their digital experiences.”
The voting date has yet to be revealed by the IEC. It says only that the elections for local government have to be held between 2nd November 2026 and 30th January 2027.
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