- AI-generated deepfakes and election disinformation can discourage voters from participating and undermine democratic processes.
- South Africa’s IEC has a dedicated Disinformation Code of Conduct for political parties and candidates.
- Real411 provides an official public platform for reporting online electoral harms, including disinformation and hate speech.
- Real411 brings together the IEC, civil society, legal experts, technology specialists and research organisations to identify and respond to digital threats.
- A new partnership with Bowmans adds pro bono legal expertise to Real411’s digital complaints committee and public awareness work.
Imagine opening your phone on election day to a video showing violent clashes at a voting station. A caption claims the station is in your ward, asserting that the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Electoral Commission (IEC) have lost control, and advising residents to stay indoors.
Fearful for your safety, you decide not to vote.
Whether that video was authentic or a fabricated deepfake, the outcome is identical – you were disenfranchised through fear, and your fundamental constitutional right to vote was compromised.
In an era defined by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and digital media, generating convincing visual fakes, from simulated electoral violence to absurd digital fabrications, requires minimal technical effort.
Undermining democracy
When digital disinformation combines with online harms such as hate speech and incitement, the consequences extend far beyond digital feeds, threatening real-world safety, prompting self-censorship and undermining 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.
Enter Real411
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 these 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 (SANEF), 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.
Legally sound
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 within the IEC. Where breaches occur, Real411 can request swift platform remediation, refer hate speech matters to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) or support the IEC in bringing matters before the Electoral Court.
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Complaints feed into the Partnership on Information Integrity in Elections (PIIE) – 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 (CABC), and academic research units like CINIA – allowing early identification of systemic disinformation trends.
To ensure the technical capacity and legal rigour of this mechanism, Real411 partnered with African law firm Bowmans through the firm’s pro bono programme, led by Bowmans head of pro bono, Fatima Laher.
Volunteer reviewers
As part of this pilot project, Bowmans mobilised lawyers from across the firm’s South African office as volunteer reviewers on the digital complaints committee, where they review reported online harms against constitutional and legal criteria. The lawyers were trained to assess complaints consistently and in accordance with the platform’s legal framework.
The collaboration also extends beyond case assessment to public awareness efforts, including webinars hosted jointly with the IEC and Moxii Africa to educate the public about the Real411 platform and its processes.
This collaboration brings together a Chapter 9 constitutional institution (the IEC), civil society (Real411, powered by Moxii Africa), private legal practice (Bowmans), and specialised technical experts (PIIE) into a unified defence of electoral integrity.
Vital innovation
This multi-stakeholder model represents a vital innovation for several key reasons:
- It builds upon a world-first model initiated in 2019, deepening international best practice for multi-stakeholder electoral defence.
- It demonstrates that domestic, constitutionally aligned solutions can effectively protect democratic processes and empower citizens, serving as a global model despite South Africa’s relatively modest size on the global tech stage.
- It offers citizens a single, clear channel to report digital harms without needing to navigate differing rules across multiple private social platforms. The public can submit via the webpage, a dedicated app or through WhatsApp.
- It enforces platform accountability based on local legal standards while preserving constitutionally protected media freedom.
Safeguarding free and fair elections in the digital era requires active civic vigilance backed by robust legal structures.
Through this partnership, South Africa continues to demonstrate how constitutional principles, civil society innovation and private sector legal expertise can unite to safeguard the ballot box and give us more reason to be optimistic about our democracy.
William Bird is director of Moxii Africa and Vanessa Jacklin-Levin is partner at Bowmans.
