• The local government elections are likely to bring a barrage of false claims about voting rules, candidate eligibility, ballot papers, results, and migrants.
• The IEC has warned that generative AI could drive ward-specific deception around the voters’ roll, ballot-box transport, and manual tallying.
• News24’s Disinformation Desk explains how to check suspicious election claims before sharing them, and where to send examples for verification.

South Africa votes in local government elections on 4 November 2026. The IEC has already issued a disinformation code covering election-related communication online and offline, including fake accounts, bots, unlabelled political adverts, and unlabelled AI-generated content.

IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya has warned that the 2026 election is likely to bring ward-specific deception driven by generative AI, especially around the voters’ roll, ballot-box transport, and manual tallying.

That means voters should expect false claims designed for their suburb, ward, language group, party loyalties, service-delivery frustrations, and local fears. These claims will move across X, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Telegram, community groups, local pages, and party-linked accounts.

Here are the key types of disinformation you can expect to see over the coming weeks:

1. False voting instructions

These posts usually sound helpful and often arrive as forwarded text messages. They warn voters to bring their own pens, avoid a certain...

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