Imagine opening your phone on election day to a video showing violent clashes at a voting station. The caption claims the station is in your ward, asserts that the South African Police Service and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) have lost control and advises residents to remain indoors.
Fearful for your safety, you decide not to vote.
Whether the video was authentic or a deepfake, the outcome is identical: you were disenfranchised through fear and your constitutional right to vote was compromised.
In an era defined by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and digital media, generating convincing visual fakes requires minimal technical effort. When digital disinformation combines with hate speech and incitement, the consequences extend beyond social media feeds into real-world safety, self-censorship and eroded democratic integrity.
While the IEC is constitutionally mandated to ensure free, fair and credible elections, protecting democratic participation cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the electoral authority, parliament, the judiciary or the media.
Mitigating digital harms requires a coordinated, multi-sector response across government, technology platforms, civil society and the private sector.
Those who seek to undermine electoral processes often command significant tools and resources; counteracting these efforts demands equal coordination, rigour and resolve.
South Africa has developed a pioneering institutional and legal framework to address these threats. The IEC promulgated a dedicated Disinformation Code of Conduct that imposes clear obligations on political parties and candidates, with severe breaches subject to referral to the Electoral Court.
Central to enforcing the standards is the designation of Real411 as the official public platform for reporting online electoral harms.
Real411 is an independent public reporting portal established in partnership with key media and civic bodies, including the South African National Editors’ Forum, the Press Council of South Africa and IAB South Africa.
Having supported the IEC across three previous election cycles, Real411 provides a home-grown, transparent mechanism grounded in South African law and constitutional principles.
Historically, citizens seeking to report digital hate speech or disinformation had little choice but to rely on internal social media platform reporting mechanisms. Those reviews were conducted behind closed doors, using opaque global guidelines that rarely reflected local constitutional standards. Real411 transforms this dynamic by subjecting reported content to an open, accountable and legally sound evaluation process:
Every incoming complaint is assessed against standard constitutional and legal criteria by three members of a dedicated digital complaints committee.
A qualified legal practitioner serving as secretariat conducts a secondary review to formulate the final determination.
Findings are shared across specialised teams in the IEC. Where breaches occur, Real411 can request swift platform remediation, refer hate speech matters to the South African Human Rights Commission or support the IEC in bringing matters before the Electoral Court.
Complaints feed into the Partnership on Information Integrity in Elections – a coalition of nearly 30 expert entities, including digital forensics firms like Murmur Intelligence, scientific bodies like the CSIR, civil society groups such as the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change and academic research units like Cinia, allowing early identification of systemic disinformation trends.
Addressing legitimate concerns about independence and bias
Real411 has faced criticism, including claims of ideological bias, capture by funders or insufficient accountability. Some of these critiques veer into conspiracy territory; others raise fair questions that any public-interest content-assessment mechanism must answer.
Moxii Africa publicly lists its donors and partners. It has stated that no donor may influence complaint outcomes or the operation of the system. Reviewers work voluntarily; the three-person review assignment is not centrally controlled in a way that allows easy stacking; and a legal secretariat provides an additional layer.
An appeals process exists. Outcomes are published so that patterns can be scrutinised.
These design choices reduce but do not eliminate, the risk of error or perceived bias. No human-led system is immune. Past public responses by the organisation have acknowledged that absolute objectivity is a myth and that the work is guided by South African constitutional values, human rights standards, fairness and accuracy.
That transparency is preferable to opaque corporate moderation but continuous independent auditing of reviewer diversity, error rates and outcome patterns would further strengthen public confidence.
Evidence of utility – and its limits
Across its years of operation, Real411 has processed thousands of complaints. During election periods it has functioned as an early-warning system, surfacing trends such as false claims about
voting processes, attacks on the credibility of the IEC and coordinated narratives that risked undermining trust in results.
Platforms have been notified; the IEC has issued corrections; and some matters have been escalated.
Yet the system’s findings are not themselves legally binding. Effectiveness depends on platform responsiveness and the IEC’s willingness to act. Scale remains a challenge: AI-generated content, cross-border amplification and unreported material will always outpace any complaints-based mechanism.
Real411 is one tool among several, not a complete solution.
Why this model matters
Compared with pure reliance on global platforms’ internal rules or with purely state-run systems that risk politicisation, our multi-stakeholder approach offers distinct advantages.
It applies local constitutional and legal criteria rather than external terms of service. It creates a single, accessible public channel. It generates a transparent archive that supports trend analysis and journalistic scrutiny. It links civil society capacity, private-sector legal expertise and the IEC’s constitutional mandate without collapsing them into a single authority.
It is not perfect, nor is it immune to criticism.
Stronger public data on uphold rates, turnaround times, platform compliance and appeals outcomes would make the case more compelling. Broader viewpoint diversity among reviewers and regular external process audits would address residual trust concerns. Greater investment in media literacy and proactive detection would complement the reactive complaints model.
Nevertheless, in a contested information environment, a home-grown mechanism grounded in South African law, open to public reporting, subject to appeal and linked to the electoral authority and specialised technical partners remains a serious and constructive contribution.
Safeguarding the ballot box in the digital age requires precisely this combination of institutional creativity, legal rigour and civic participation — together with the humility to keep improving the design when legitimate questions are raised.
• Bird is director at Moxii Africa
• Jacklin-Levin is a partner at Bowmans
- Imagine opening your phone on election day to a video showing violent clashes at a voting station.
- The caption claims the station is in your ward, asserts that the South African Police Service and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) have lost control and advises residents to remain indoors.
- Fearful for your safety, you decide not to vote.
- Whether the video was authentic or a deepfake, the outcome is identical: you were disenfranchised through fear and your constitutional right to vote was compromised.
- In an era defined by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and digital media, generating convincing visual fakes requires minimal technical effort.
