Kubayi to open UJ's first AI and law conference in Skukuza

Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi addresses delegates at the inaugural Artificial Intelligence and the Law Conference in Skukuza, Mpumalanga, on Thursday, 9 July 2026.

The University of Johannesburg’s AI and Law Institute hosts the event, which the department describes as bringing together industry players, judicial leaders and legal experts to engage on the impact of emerging technologies and the role of law, governance and policy in access to justice and sustainable development.

The conference is convened under the theme “Advancing the Sustainable Development goals through Law, Governance and Practice.”

That is the full extent of what the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development has placed on the record in its statement of 8 July 2026, which announces the address rather than the content of it. The Enquirer is working from that statement, published at https://www.justice.gov.za/m_statements/2026/20260708-AI-and-the-law-Min.html, and nothing here should be read as a preview of what the minister will say.

Why the venue matters

Skukuza sits inside the Kruger National Park, in the province where the conference is being held, and the choice of a Lowveld setting for a national conversation about artificial intelligence puts the gathering well outside the usual Sandton and Cape Town circuit where technology policy is normally debated.

It is also the first such conference run by the institute, which places the University of Johannesburg at the centre of a question the country’s courts, law firms and regulators are already confronting: how existing law applies to systems that generate text, images and decisions at speed.

Media enquiries for the address are directed to Ms Palesa Rammitlwa, spokesperson to the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, on 064 933 3628.

What the record shows

The statement names the minister, the host university and its institute, the town, the date and the theme. It names no speakers beyond the minister, no programme and no outcomes, because none had been published at the time of writing.

The conference theme ties the law and governance directly to the Sustainable Development Goals, the framework South Africa shares with the rest of the world, and it frames access to justice as a question of practice rather than principle.

That framing matters for a country where the distance between a right and the office that delivers it is often the whole story. Access to justice is a lived question in magistrate’s courts and legal aid offices, not an abstraction, and any serious discussion of technology in law has to answer for it.

What it means for ordinary South Africans

Artificial intelligence reaches ordinary people through the systems that decide things about them: credit checks, grant administration, insurance claims, recruitment shortlists and the records courts rely on. The law that governs those systems, and the governance that keeps them honest, is the subject on the table in Skukuza.

The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has put its name to the conversation by sending the minister to open it. Whether the conference produces anything a citizen can use, from a policy position to a set of guidelines, is the question the next statement from the department will answer.

The address is scheduled for Thursday, 9 July 2026.

Source: Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. Read the original item.