South Africa's Competition Commission closed 2025 with a regulatory one-two punch unprecedented on the African continent. On November 13, it published the final report of its Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI), securing a fully enforceable R688 million (~$40 million) structured settlement from Google. Three months later, on February 6, 2026, it gazetted the Online Intermediation Platforms Guidance Note under section 79 of the Competition Act, formalising binding compliance expectations across a sweeping range of digital platforms. Together, these two instruments represent something the European Union assembled through statute — a digital markets regime — built entirely within South Africa's existing competition law architecture.
What the Inquiry Found
The case against Google was grounded in 24 months of evidence gathering, five rounds of information requests, public hearings, a consumer survey, and in-camera sessions. The Commission's core finding: Google extracted an estimated R200–R300 million per year in value from South African publishers without adequate compensation. The mechanism was multi-layered. AI-generated summaries reduced referral traffic by delivering answers without clicks. Google's algorithm systematically disadvantaged local and vernacular outlets relative to foreign media. And across the advertising technology stack — where Google holds a super-dominant position controlling more than 90% of search — publishers received only 55% of programmatic advertising revenue on news content.
The inquiry also examined Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and X. Meta was found to have deliberately downgraded news in its feed, disrupting the referral traffic publishers historically depended on. Across all platforms, publishers reported that AI web crawlers continued scraping their content under opt-out rather than opt-in frameworks — a design choice the Commission found left South African media organisations "ill-equipped" to protect their own content.
The Google Settlement: Enforceable, but Negotiated
The Commission's response was a structured settlement rather than a Tribunal-mandated remedy. The R688 million is spread over five years: R38 million annually for three years supports the Digital News Transformation Fund for small and community media; R71 million yearly for five years flows through Google News Showcase to national publishers and broadcasters; and R45 million annually for three years funds an AI Innovation Fund for mainstream media. Google also agreed to AI transparency requirements aligned with EU standards, including content-control mechanisms for training data.
The strongest argument for this approach is pragmatic. Pursuing hard-litigated structural remedies through the Competition Tribunal would have taken years and produced contested, delayed outcomes. The settlement is fully enforceable, links platform funding access to Press Council membership — strengthening self-regulation — and delivers guaranteed resources to cash-strapped community newsrooms far faster than prolonged adjudication would have.
But the structural trade-offs are significant. The Commission dropped a proposed 5–10% digital levy on platform advertising revenue — the mechanism that would have created a self-replenishing fund for local journalism regardless of platform cooperation. It abandoned reforms to Google's ranking algorithms on the grounds that these would have required intervening in "core technology design." And it secured no licensing or compensation framework for AI training data — a gap that compounds as generative AI cements publisher dependence on the very platforms extracting their content.
Meta's Free Pass: The Inquiry's Asymmetry
The MDPMI's most glaring omission is the treatment of Meta. Despite findings that it downgraded news content with competitive consequences for publishers, the Commission imposed no financial remedies. Publishers appealed this disparity to the Competition Tribunal. The South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF) publicly requested access to all appeal papers. As of mid-2026, those documents have not been released.
The opacity matters beyond the domestic context. South Africa is actively presenting this inquiry as a model for Global South competition enforcement. If Meta's lighter treatment reflects closed-door negotiation rather than a principled distinction grounded in conduct or market power, the model loses credibility precisely where it needs it most — in setting a replicable precedent for African regulators confronting the same platforms.
The Broader Enforcement Architecture
If the MDPMI addresses media and search, the February 2026 Online Intermediation Platforms Guidance Note extends the Commission's reach across the wider digital economy. Finalised after a public consultation on a draft released in October 2025, the Guidance Note covers Takealot (e-commerce), Booking.com (online travel), UberEats and Mr D Food (food delivery), Apple and Google Play (app stores), and property and automotive classifieds platforms.
Six categories of conduct are explicitly flagged as raising competition concerns: price parity restrictions, self-preferencing, interoperability limitations, misuse of business-user data, differentiated trading terms, and unfair trading conditions. Platforms must now provide evidence-backed justifications for contested practices — theoretical efficiency claims alone are insufficient. Critically, the Commission applies a lower evidentiary threshold — an "adverse effect on competition" rather than "substantial prevention" — allowing it to pursue cumulative, design-embedded harms affecting SMEs and historically disadvantaged businesses.
A Model With a Ceiling
South Africa has constructed, through competition law alone, what the EU assembled through the Digital Markets Act. That is a genuine achievement. The structural flexibility of competition law lets the Commission adapt as markets evolve without waiting for new legislation. And the MDPMI's scope — spanning search, social media, adtech, and generative AI simultaneously — is among the most comprehensive platform inquiries mounted by any Global South regulator.
But competition law enforces case by case. It cannot mandate interoperability regimes, compel algorithmic audits at scale, or impose prospective gatekeeping obligations on designated platforms. The dropped digital levy, abandoned ranking reforms, and unresolved AI content licensing question are not minor omissions — they are the structural interventions a dedicated digital markets statute would have delivered. South Africa has demonstrated that proportionate, evidence-based regulation can move faster and further than its critics expected. What it has not yet shown is whether competition law can move far enough.