The Democratic Alliance has petitioned President Thabo Mbeki to return the controversial Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill, known as the E-Commerce Bill, to Parliament for reconsideration.
The petition was sent to Mbeki’s office on Wednesday while he was in Canada for the G8 summit to sell the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
DA MP Dene Smuts said the Bill’s proposed domain name authority — a Section 21 company to administer the .za domain — was unconstitutional, and Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s role in appointing the authority’s board of directors and its regulations too wide-ranging.
She said it was worrying that the Bill simply constituted the authority by identifying Namespace ZA, a group of prominent Internet users, and another person representing the communications minister. At a later stage it was up to the minister to appoint the authority’s board of directors and chairperson and draft regulations.
Namespace ZA was formed to take over the domain name administration from Mike Lawrie, who has administered the domain since the early 1990s. Lawrie has acknowledged a single person administrator is not sufficient, but insisted the future administrator should be an Internet community-controlled body.
Smuts said the government had no role in redelegating the domain name administrator. According to the rules of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the ”appropriate government official” merely had to be informed. Also, the rules required broad support from the local Internet community and proof of sufficient technical know-how before such redelegation was acceptable.
The Bill is awaiting presidential assent before it becomes law after its adoption this week in the National Council of Provinces. It was passed
in the National Assembly earlier this month. Mbeki may, under Section 79 of the Constitution, refer any proposed law back to Parliament or the Constitutional Court if he has doubts about its constitutionality. If the concerns are addressed, he must sign it into law.