South Africa’s New Election Disinformation Code Draws Fire: Critics Say 36-Hour Rule Too Slow, Tech Platforms Untouched
As South Africa gears up for the November Local Government Elections, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has unveiled a new Electoral Code of Conduct specifically targeting disinformation. The measure is designed to curb the spread of false and misleading information by political parties and candidates during the campaign season. The introduction of this code reflects a growing global anxiety about the role that social media, manipulated content, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence tools play in shaping voter perceptions and potentially undermining the integrity of democratic processes. The IEC has framed the code as a necessary safeguard to ensure that the upcoming municipal elections, which determine local leadership on issues ranging from water supply to housing, are conducted fairly and based on accurate information. However, even as the commission presents the code as a robust response to a modern electoral threat, civil society groups and media watchdogs are already questioning whether the measure goes far enough in addressing the true scale of the problem.
The specifics of the new code place a clear obligation on political actors. Under its provisions, political parties and individual candidates are required to publicly retract and correct any false or misleading information they have disseminated within a strict 36-hour window upon being challenged or upon discovering the error. This provision aims to create a fast-acting accountability mechanism that forces campaigns to own their mistakes before false narratives can take root in the electorate’s consciousness. The code also establishes a complaints and adjudication process, allowing opponents and ordinary citizens to lodge grievances against parties that violate the accuracy standards. The IEC argues that this timeline is reasonable, giving campaigns enough time to verify claims while still acting quickly enough to prevent significant damage. The commission sees this as a critical step in an era where AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated audio clips, and doctored images can be produced and circulated at scale, threatening not only the outcomes of elections but also public confidence in the democratic system itself.
Yet the reaction from civil society has been sharply critical, and the loudest objections come from the Right2Know campaign, a prominent advocacy group that has long monitored state secrecy and media freedom. Right2Know National Communication Coordinator Yolanda Yalezo delivered a blistering assessment in an interview with Jacaranda FM News, arguing that the code is fundamentally flawed because it operates on a false assumption about where disinformation actually originates. Yalezo contends that while political parties are certainly capable of spreading falsehoods, a massive portion of the disinformation that circulates during South African elections is generated and amplified by third parties, including anonymous social media accounts, foreign interference operations, and citizens who unknowingly share manipulated content. By focusing the code’s enforcement mechanisms almost exclusively on parties and candidates, the IEC leaves the broader ecosystem of misinformation untouched, allowing the most insidious forms of false content to spread with little to no consequence.
At the heart of Yalezo’s criticism is the question of speed. In the digital age, information moves at the speed of light, and viral content on platforms like WhatsApp and TikTok can reach millions of users within minutes. A 36-hour window, she argues, is an eternity in this context. By the time a party formally retracts a false statement or a candidate issues a correction, the original lie has already been viewed, shared, screenshotted, and embedded in the mental frameworks of countless voters. The damage is done, and a simple retraction buried in the news cycle cannot undo it. Yalezo points to the structure of messaging apps like WhatsApp, where end-to-end encryption and intimate group chats make false information feel credible and personal, and to TikTok’s algorithmic amplification, which can rocket a misleading video to global virality before any fact-checker has even seen it. The IEC’s 36-hour rule, she says, treats disinformation like a defamation case, but it functions more like a viral contagion that requires a dramatically faster response.
Yalezo’s proposed solutions are bold and demand a far more aggressive regulatory posture. Rather than relying on parties to police themselves, she argues that the IEC should be entering binding, enforceable agreements directly with the technology platforms that serve as the primary vectors for disinformation. She specifically names Meta—the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp—as well as TikTok and Google, insisting that these corporations must be made legally accountable for the role their infrastructure plays in election interference. Under this framework, content that has been independently adjudicated as false would be immediately and automatically labelled, visibly downranked in users’ feeds and search results, and crucially, blocked from being forwarded. Her controversial proposal to halt forwarding entirely draws a direct line to the 2018 WhatsApp misinformation crisis in India, where viral hoaxes led to lynchings, and to the platform’s subsequent decision to limit message forwards globally. Yalezo insists that a similar, if temporary, measure during election periods is not an overreach but a proportionate response to a documented threat.
Beyond the reactive measures, Yalezo urges the IEC to fundamentally rethink its approach to voter education, shifting from a punitive model to a proactive one. She criticizes the commission for spending its energy punishing lies after they have spread, rather than preemptively flooding communities with accurate, accessible information that is already baked into the public’s consciousness before the disinformation campaign begins. Her vision is one where the IEC, in partnership with civil society, community radio stations, and trusted local leaders, saturates the nation with clear, simple educational content about how ballots work, how votes are counted, and where voting stations are located. This is not a glamorous strategy, but it is an effective one. A voter who understands the electoral process from the ground up is far less susceptible to false narratives about rigged machines or mass voter suppression. Yalezo frames this as the difference between waiting for a house fire and then calling the fire department, versus installing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in every room in advance. The former might save a few lives; the latter prevents the fire from starting in the first place.
Finally, Yalezo turns her attention to the South African voter, offering advice that cuts through the noise of the digital age. Citing the bread-and-butter issues that actually define local government elections—water, electricity, potholes, and housing—she reminds voters that the content of their ballot choices should be grounded in their lived reality, not in the viral sensations that dominate their social media feeds. A WhatsApp forward about a candidate’s alleged corruption could be true, or it could be a deliberate fabrication designed to manipulate tribal loyalties or personal grievances. The antidote, Yalezo suggests, is simple: stop, verify, and trust only official sources. She encourages voters to cross-reference any shocking claim against the IEC’s own communications channels, to check the websites and official spokespeople of the parties involved, and to rely on established news outlets with a track record of editorial rigor. Her closing exhortation—”No WhatsApp message knows your street better than you do”—is a powerful call for citizens to trust their own knowledge of their local conditions over the anonymous, unverifiable claims that pollute the digital landscape. As campaigning intensifies in the run-up to November, the debate over how best to protect the integrity of South Africa’s democracy is far from settled, but one thing is clear: the battle for the truth is now as much a part of the election as the ballot itself. The question remains whether the IEC’s new code is the beginning of a comprehensive solution or merely a well-intentioned first step in a much larger, more complex struggle.
