In the final stretch before South Africa’s local government elections on 4 November, the Electoral Commission of South Africa found itself defending something just as important as ballot boxes: public trust. With at least 700 complaints about election-related misinformation already received, the IEC was dealing with a threat that did not exist in the same form a generation ago. This was not a single fake news story that could be easily dismissed. It was a steady stream of falsehoods spreading across social media, designed to make voters question the integrity of the election. The complaints, which continued to grow in number, were a reminder that democracy is not only about what happens at the polling station. It is about what voters believe before they get there. Many of those who reported the misinformation were simply confused or concerned. They saw a photo that looked wrong, or a message that seemed designed to make them angry, and they did not know what to do. The IEC became their first stop. For every complaint, there was a story: a first-time voter worried that her registration had been deleted, a community leader trying to calm people who had seen a doctored image of a long queue, a young person uncertain whether a viral post about alleged electoral fraud was true. The IEC’s work was not merely administrative. It was deeply human. The phrase “local government elections” may sound dry, but these elections decide who will manage water, electricity, roads, and basic services in communities across the country. When misinformation threatens them, it threatens ordinary people’s ability to shape their own lives. Dr Victor Shale, the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for Outreach, would later explain that the information being spread was often deliberate, malicious, and harmful. The Commission had to respond not only by denying falsehoods, but by doing the slower, harder work of maintaining a sense of calm and good faith in the electoral system. The 700 complaints were not only a problem to solve; they were a sign of how active and engaged South African citizens had become.
Faced with this onslaught, the IEC realised it could not fight the battle alone. In a sign of how much the information landscape has changed, the Commission formed partnerships with some of the biggest digital platforms in the world: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Moxii Africa, and TikTok. Each of these companies controls a different corner of the internet, from search results to social media feeds to messaging services. Misinformation rarely stays on one platform, so any successful response had to be co-ordinated. By working together, the IEC and the platforms could do something that no single institution could do by itself: identify content that was circulating, assess whether it was harmful, and in certain cases remove it or reduce its reach. This partnership was not about censorship. It was about protecting the integrity of an election. The metaphor might be a neighbourhood watch. The IEC knows the local streets and the issues that matter to residents; the platforms know the digital highways and the algorithms that carry information. Together, they can spot suspicious activity quickly and respond before it goes viral. The involvement of major global companies also highlights a strange new reality: the health of a local election in South Africa now depends, in part, on decisions made by technology companies based in other countries. That is unsettling, but it is also a necessary adaptation. Social media has become the public square. If someone stands in that square and shouts a falsehood, the crowd does not just ignore it; they repeat it, reshape it, and carry it to every corner of the country. The IEC needed allies with the technical ability to track those repetitions. The partnerships were announced alongside the mounting complaints, sending a clear message that the Commission took the problem seriously. The goal was not simply to take down posts after they went viral, but to create a system where misinformation could be flagged, investigated, and corrected before it could cause lasting damage. In a time when information moves at the speed of a finger tap, the institutions responsible for democracy had to learn to move just as quickly.
Most of the complaints received by the IEC were about posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. That is perhaps not surprising. X is a place where political conversations are open and fast, and where influential accounts can spread messages to thousands of people in seconds. The content that worried the IEC included the misuse of photographs and, increasingly, material generated by artificial intelligence. A photograph taken at an old protest could be recycled to look like a current event. A distorted image, created by AI, could show a ballot box being opened by the wrong hands, or a polling station in chaos, even if none of that had actually happened. The danger of such content lies in its believability. Humans are visual creatures. We tend to trust our eyes, and when we see a shocking image, our first instinct is not to question it but to share it, often with a message of alarm. Dr Victor Shale explained the motive behind such posts. Speaking on POWER Breakfast, he described misinformation as “information that is disseminated with the intention to cause harm. This is now deliberate, malicious information. This information is information that is distributed that has the potential to impact the integrity of the elections or the entity.” His words capture the shift from traditional false news to something more menacing. The goal, Shale said, was to question the integrity of the elections and cause ill intent. It is not just that people are spreading lies; they are doing so on purpose, with the aim of undermining the entire democratic process. If enough voters believe the election is rigged, they may stay home. If enough citizens believe that their vote does not matter, the very foundation of democracy weakens. The IEC recognised that this kind of manipulation is a form of attack. It was not enough to correct a false caption or debunk a fake photo. The Commission had to understand the intent behind the message and respond to the harm it could cause. Above all, the focus on X and AI-generated content showed a worrying trend: modern elections can be influenced by another person clicking “post” from anywhere in the world. The faces in the fake images may be South African, but the methods were universal.
The IEC’s response to each report was careful and methodical, but it also had to be quick. When staff identified information that was untrue, they first looked at the source. Where did the post come from? Who created it? How widely had it spread? Then they flagged the content on their own social media platforms and provided the correct information. This act of correction was as much about visibility as accuracy. If a false story had travelled through thousands of accounts, the truth could not be hidden in a short statement on a website. It had to appear in the same feed, in the same format, and with the same urgency as the original lie. The IEC also alerted the digital platforms with whom they had formed partnerships. These companies were asked to investigate the flagged content and, where necessary, take it down. That process was not automatic. Each platform had its own rules, and each case had to be considered on its own merits. But the partnership gave the IEC a channel for direct action in a way that had not existed before. Shale said that when they identify information that is untrue, they immediately look at the source and flag it on their social media platforms, and provide the correct one. They also alert the digital platforms they are in partnership with to investigate it and take it down. This double strategy is important. Taking down a single post does not erase the memory or the screenshot. Providing a credible, visible answer helps people who saw the falsehood understand what is actually true. The IEC was essentially doing what community leaders have always done: listening to a rumour, finding out where it came from, and then telling the truth in a clear and public way. The only difference was the scale and speed. A rumour about a broken water pump might once have been corrected at a village meeting. Now a false accusation about electoral fraud travels from Johannesburg to Cape Town in seconds, and the correction needed to travel just as far. The process was not perfect, and it could not catch every lie, but it showed that the Commission was not going to remain silent. It understood that in the absence of an authoritative correction, the lie starts to look like the truth.
Not all misinformation was the same, and Shale was careful to make this distinction. The number of complaints was increasing, but the IEC had developed categories to understand the extent of the problem. Some of the misinformation, he said, was “almost bordering on hate speech.” Other posts were “really harassment,” and some were “incitement of violence.” Each of these categories demanded a different level of response. A false statement about a candidate’s policy, if it was not harmful, might simply be corrected. A post containing harassment could be reported to the platform and potentially removed. But clear incitement of violence was a different matter entirely. That was not just misinformation. It was a threat to public safety and to the peaceful conduct of the election. The IEC had to be careful, however, not to treat every piece of misinformation as high risk. Shale noted that when they do investigations, some things that have been flagged as high risk are not actually bad. That is why they categorise. A post that looks alarming at first glance may turn out to be a bad joke, a misread date, or a misunderstanding by a well-meaning person. If the IEC had responded to every falsehood with the same heavy hand, it could have created the opposite problem: accusations of suppressing free speech or exaggerating threats. The categorisation process allowed the Commission to calibrate its response with care and proportionality. It also revealed how deeply misinformation can contaminate public discourse. Hate speech, harassment, and incitement to violence were not side effects; for some, they were the point. By spreading fear and anger, these posts could inflame tensions in communities and create an atmosphere in which violence might seem justified. Shale explained that when something is truly extreme, such as clear incitement to violence, the IEC has to trigger the electoral code of conduct and report the matter to the electoral court to take action. This was the institutional equivalent of a referee showing a red card. It took the matter out of the social media arena and into the legal arena, where a judge could determine responsibility. The ability to escalate was crucial. It showed that the fight against misinformation was not merely about public relations; it was backed by the force of law.
At its heart, the story of the 700 complaints is not a story about technology or algorithms. It is a story about trust. Every false post that spread before the local government elections was an attempt to make South Africans doubt one another, doubt their institutions, and doubt the very idea of democracy. The IEC, along with its partners and the citizens who reported what they saw, pushed back against that doubt. They did so with a mix of transparency, partnerships, and legal mechanisms. But the responsibility cannot rest on the IEC alone. In a world where anyone can create and share content, every reader has to become a kind of editor. Before sharing that screenshot, ask: Does this look real? Who is the source? What is this post trying to make me feel? The work of protecting democracy happens in the quiet moments before we press the share button. It also happens when we choose to report misinformation instead of passing it on. The IEC’s numbers kept climbing, which might sound discouraging, but it also means that more people were paying attention and more people were willing to act. Dr Shale and his team were not naive. They knew that not every high-risk flag was a real danger, and they knew that some falsehoods would outrun their corrections. But they also knew that silence was not an option. The partnerships with Google, Meta, Microsoft, Moxii Africa, and TikTok, the daily flagging, the public corrections, and the referrals to the electoral court were all part of a larger promise: the Commission would not allow lies to have the last word. As the votes on 4 November were counted, the battle against misinformation did not end. It continues after every election, in every community, on every screen. The 700 complaints are a reminder that democratic institutions are fragile and require constant care. And yet, the response of the IEC and of the many citizens who reported suspicious content is a reminder that democratic instincts are still alive. The lie may travel halfway around the world, but the truth, when protected by people who care, can catch up. The story of the 700 complaints is ultimately a story of resilience: a nation’s electoral system, stretched and tested, but determined to remain honest.