The South African Internet community has praised communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri for her speech at the ICANN conference, saying it heals the rift between the community and government. The speech earned the minister a standing ovation this week.
"The speech was fantastic and constructive," says .za domain name administrator Mike Lawrie. "There never has been a reason for the Internet community and the government to doubt each other."
The re-delegation of the .za ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) was initially an acrimonious process as Lawrie tried to hand over to an organisation that could carry on the administration work within the values of the Internet community.
Government felt he was trying to hold onto control and was not necessarily co-operating in the process.
The acrimony reached its peak in Parliament three years ago when Matsepe-Casaburri delivered a scathing attack on Lawrie during the second reading of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act - under which the .za Domain Name Authority was set up.
Addressing the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) conference in Cape Town this week, Matsepe-Casaburri thanked Lawrie "for his support of this process and for the years of selfless commitment to the management and operation of the .za ccTLD".
"I think the hatchet between myself and the minister was buried some time ago when she took the step of appointing me to the panel of five to appoint the new .za domain name board. It was a brave move," Lawrie says.
The .za Domain Name Authority, which will take over from Lawrie, has a board of 13 members and is based on a public/private partnership. The ICANN board has approved provisional re-delegation and apart from some administrative matters, full approval is expected early next year.
"The minister`s speech brings the whole .za domain name debate full circle," says Richard Heath, director of regulatory affairs for M-Web. "It is positive for all concerned as it shows that public and private sectors can work together."
Lawrie was involved in the first transmission of Internet Protocol packets between Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town during the late 1980s. He became the .za administrator in 1994 - a task for which he has never been paid.
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