Three months before South Africans vote, the battle isn't only for their votes, it’s for their trust.
As campaigning ramps up ahead of the local government elections on November 4, voters will have to make two major decisions: who to vote for, and what to believe.
This isn't about politicians making over-ambitious promises they may struggle to keep. It's something far more dangerous: the deliberate distortion of truth and attempts to manipulate what voters believe before they cast their ballots.
“It’s a major problem,” Thabani Ngwira from the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) told The National this week.
In its draft Electoral Code of Conduct on Countering Disinformation, which was recently published for public comment, the Commission proposed penalties for political parties and candidates found to have breached the Code by spreading disinformation.
“Nothing happens at the moment … that’s why we want to include penalties for those who breach our Code of Conduct,” Ngwira said.
There's a difference between the proposed Electoral Code of Conduct on Countering Disinformation and the Electoral Code of Conduct contained in the Electoral Act.
The existing Code aims to promote conditions conducive to free and fair elections, including a climate of tolerance, free political campaigning and open public debate.
The IEC said that once an election has been proclaimed, parties, their agents and candidates commit to adhering to the Code until the results are officially announced. Failure to comply can result in candidates being disqualified.
Anyone who breaches the Code commits a criminal offence and could face a fine or up to 10 years in prison.
Political parties can also face serious sanctions, including a fine of up to R200,000, having their votes in an area cancelled, or even having their registration as a party cancelled.
The proposed disinformation Code would add another layer of regulation specifically aimed at false or misleading information circulating during an election.
And disinformation is not a stranger to South Africa.
In March, the IEC warned that the rise of artificial intelligence had fueled an increase in digital fraud, misinformation and disinformation.
It had detected fake websites impersonating the Commission and fraudulent recruitment notices circulating on social media, warning the public not to share personal information or click on suspicious links.
But the problem started even before the current wave of artificial intelligence.
In the 2019 election, Media Monitoring Africa's REAL411 project received a complaint about images circulating on Twitter that appeared to show ballot boxes being discarded.
The material appeared to be misleading, and the IEC investigated the matter before clarifying the position through its own communication channels.
Ahead of the 2021 local government elections, Media Monitoring Africa teamed up with the IEC to establish REAL411, an online portal where members of the public could report disinformation circulating online and on social media.
By then, election disinformation was already an established problem. What has changed is the technology available to create and distribute it.
In December 2022, the IEC had to debunk a fabricated WhatsApp exchange allegedly showing its chief electoral officer being paid to manipulate the outcome of an ANC leadership election.
The claim was false, but by then the allegation was already doing what disinformation does best: creating doubt.
The MK Party case
Four years later, the stakes are arguably higher.
The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party has challenged the 2024 election results, alleging that its votes were stolen — a claim disputed by the IEC. The Electoral Court heard arguments in the case in June and has reserved judgment.
“We have tried so many times to explain our system, but they keep on going to the same narrative that we stole their vote,” Ngwira said. “And then we explain to them how the counting and capturing of votes goes.”
The dispute shows just how difficult it is to combat disinformation.
Kira Alberts, research coordinator at the Centre for Research on Democracy at Stellenbosch University, says one of the biggest misconceptions about disinformation is that it has to be outrageous, obviously false or something completely new.
In fact, she says, it’s often most effective when it reinforces something people already believe. “Disinformation is really dangerous because it looks to be true,” she says.
According to Alberts, if someone already believes their municipality is failing them, that a political party is corrupt or that unemployment is being caused by a particular group, a false story that appears to confirm that belief is more likely to be accepted and shared.
And local elections can be particularly vulnerable because they’re so closely tied to people’s everyday grievances.
“It’s really easy to pick up on that grievance and run with it in a piece of disinformation,” Alberts says.
Those grievances can include service delivery, electricity, unemployment, transport and immigration.
Alberts said much of the disinformation is also likely to travel through WhatsApp and other closed networks, where fact-checking organisations have far less visibility or no access to the messages.
She said the most damaging information could be a false claim sent by a friend or family member, which can carry more weight because it comes through an existing network of trust.
“You’re more likely to share that because there’s already that existing trust network,” Alberts said.
What voters should watch out for
And what should voters expect as the elections draw closer? Not necessarily only sophisticated AI-generated deepfakes.
She said some of the most effective disinformation can be much more mundane, like false claims that a voting station has been closed, that voters need additional documents, or even a particular pen.
“It won’t necessarily be the deep fakes and the sophisticated AI,” Alberts said. Instead, it can be the “benign almost bits of information” that simply seek to “sow confusion and muddy the waters”.
The danger, she says, isn’t only that voters believe something that isn’t true. A constant stream of conflicting or deliberately misleading information can leave people feeling that they can’t trust the information around them at all.
That can lead to disengagement and, ultimately, lack of interest. “We just need to make sure that it doesn’t muddy the waters and create apathy,” says Alberts.
Experts says political parties must be able to challenge the Commission, question its decisions and raise concerns about the conduct of an election. At the same time, political criticism cannot simply be dismissed as disinformation because the IEC disagrees with it.
But the information becomes more difficult to assess when allegations are presented as fact, especially when fake evidence is used to support them.
Technology is making this even easier than before.
Disinformation and AI
In March 2024, a doctored video emerged purporting to show US President Donald Trump calling on South Africans to vote for the MK Party. The video was later proven to be false.
However, it was a glimpse of what election disinformation can look like when artificial intelligence and social media meet politics: a familiar face, a convincing voice and a message that appears to come directly from the source.
The World Economic Forum's 2026 Global Risks Report ranks misinformation and disinformation as the world's second-biggest risk over the next two years, with cyber insecurity sixth.
The report also ranks adverse outcomes from artificial intelligence as the risk rising most sharply over time, moving from 30th in its two-year outlook to fifth over the next decade.
UNESCO has also warned that the internet, social media and artificial intelligence are creating new challenges for electoral processes around the world, with implications for both the integrity of elections and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and access to information.
It says media organisations, political parties and electoral regulators all have a role to play in countering disinformation while protecting freedom of expression.
The IEC has been preparing for the problem for some time.
Ahead of previous elections, it worked with digital platforms and Media Monitoring Africa to counter disinformation, and it has warned that it expects such incidents to increase as election day approaches.
Right now, a lot of the political talk is happening away from traditional political party rallies and election posters; it’s now inside people's phones.
A claim can move from one WhatsApp group to another, or from a social media post into mainstream political debate, before there is time to establish whether or not it’s true.
The IEC's proposed Electoral Code of Conduct on Countering Disinformation places responsibility not only on voters, but also on political parties, candidates and other electoral participants.
The Commission said countering disinformation is a shared responsibility and that the proposed Code aims to promote responsible communication while at the same time protecting constitutional rights to freedom of expression, political participation and access to information.
While the proposed penalties are likely to assist the IEC, they also raise an uncomfortable question: who decides where legitimate political concerns end and deliberate deception begins?
The answer matters a lot because an electoral commission can’t expect political parties to accept every decision without challenge. Voters, in turn, can’t be expected to make informed choices if fabricated claims, fake evidence and manipulated media are purposely presented to them as fact.
Come November, South Africans will have to decide who deserves their vote; and what version of reality they believe.
wendy.jdc@nationalmg.co.za