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Understanding the limitations of fines in the Al trade landscape

The Star

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October 20, 2025

TWO SOUTH Africans have acquitted themselves very well in the trade wars of whose sovereignty.

This is when it comes to information and knowledge creation. One grew up in Lesotho as a South African refugee and the other in the Cape Flats. Zakes Mda and Eldrid Jordaan have lit the torch of struggle and shed light in the dark and extractive allays of Silicon Valley.

After Donald Trump won the elections as a second term president of the United States, it became clear that South Africa was one on the list of the slash and burn countries. This included the little country, which no one knows about except only the MAGA maniac himself. That South Africa was in the pickle was not only important to the US of "Sleepy Joe" but was equally crucial for the MAGA maniac.

That South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice made the agenda of the US converge. It mattered not whether it was the Republicans or the Democrats. South Africa in January had to strategise on how they will temper the horses that had bolted out of the White House.

All matters trade were on the agenda. There was and remain the issue of information technology in all its manifestations on the agenda. To this end Professor of Practice at University of Johannesburg, Eldrid Jordaan, based on our paths that crossed on this essential question of whose data and data sovereignty deliberated the matter. In the end it was my considered view that when the President of South Africa assembles his team to meet his counterpart whenever he does, in his information technology munition, he would be advised to take along Jordaan. Why would Jordaan be crucial in that discussion?

Jordaan acquitted himself by taking Meta to court on encroaching the rights of GovChat. The central argument Jordaan made and won is this, "But what they did not understand was that GovChat was a co-created platform.

It was co-created with the South African government, with departments like Cogta, the Department of Health, the Department of Social Development and Sassa."

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