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It is one thing to govern a city or a province. It is quite another to govern a country. This is something the Democratic Alliance (DA) is finding out.

This weekend South Africa’s draft artificial intelligence (AI) policy was released by the Department of Communications, which is led by Solly Malatsi, of the DA. However, it soon had to be withdrawn as it emerged that many of the sources in the document did not exist and had been the result of AI hallucinations.

After the policy was withdrawn Malatsi released a statement on X that said: “This failure is not a mere technical issue but has compromised the integrity and credibility of the draft policy. As such, I am withdrawing the Draft National Artificial intelligence (sic) Policy.”

He said that South Africans “deserve better”.

“The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies did not deliver on the standard that is acceptable for an institution entrusted with the role to lead South Africa’s digital policy environment. The most plausible explanation is that AI-generated citations were included without proper verification. This should not have happened. In fact, this unacceptable lapse proves why vigilant human oversight over the use of artificial intelligence is critical. It’s a lesson we take with humility. I want to reassure the country that we are treating this matter with the gravity it deserves. There will be consequence management for those responsible for drafting and quality assurance,” Malatsi said.

This lapse under Malatsi’s watch is the latest in a number of missteps by DA ministers in the unity government. A new proposed national education curriculum, which has been criticised by education experts, has been released by the Department of Basic Education under Siviwe Gwarube, while the reaction to an ongoing foot-and-mouth outbreak has been fumbled by John Steenhuisen, both DA ministers.

While Malatsi’s lapse is not at the scale of those by Gwarube and Steenhuisen it reveals a worrying lack of expertise and conscientiousness in departments with DA political heads. If an expert in AI policy had seen the departmental document and studied it properly, they would likely have flagged the imaginary sources.

In addition, it reveals a worrying lack of due care that these sources would have got through the department’s own checking, editing, and vetting procedures. It would be unsurprising to find that a master’s thesis at a South African university goes through a more rigorous and checking procedure than that which this document underwent.

South Africa is an extraordinarily complex state to govern. It is not simply a matter of political will or ideological positioning. It requires deep technical expertise, institutional memory, and the ability to interrogate highly specialised information across multiple domains. That is especially true in frontier sectors such as AI, where policy mistakes can have far-reaching economic and regulatory consequences.

The DA has demonstrated, in many municipalities across the country and in the Western Cape at provincial government level, that it can deliver better governance than its rivals. But municipal and provincial governance, while difficult, is a different kettle of fish from governing nationally. Being in power at a national level involves crafting frameworks that interact with global systems, advanced technologies, and highly technical disciplines.

That requires a different calibre of support.

Experts matter. Proper advisory structures matter. The ability to interrogate a document and immediately recognise that sources do not exist is not a political skill. It is a professional one. In any serious policy environment, such errors would be caught long before a document reached Cabinet, let alone public release.

If South Africa is to be governed effectively, particularly as coalition politics becomes the norm, political leaders will need to surround themselves with people who understand the domains they are regulating. Without that, even well-intentioned administrations will falter.

The cost of failing to build that capability is not just embarrassment. It is policy paralysis, investor uncertainty, and the gradual erosion of state credibility.

South Africa does not lack talent. It lacks the consistent integration of that talent into the machinery of government. Fix that, and the country’s prospects shift quickly. Ignore it, and even the best political projects will stumble at the point where rhetoric meets reality.