South Africa’s Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has called for greater “legitimate” government involvement in the governance of the internet.
Addressing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) annual meeting in Cape Town on Thursday, the minister said: “It is no secret that the South African government has been critical of the existing internet governance structures because they were established by and skewed in favour of those who first implemented these technologies as this had the consequence of potentially disadvantaging those who are only now accessing these technologies.”
Icann is a public private partnership as well as being an international, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for internet protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) top-level domain name system management and root server system management functions.
These services were originally performed under a United States government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities, but Icann now performs the IANA function.
Matsepe-Casaburri said: “We are of the firm view that we cannot continue on this path perpetuating old relationships according to which developing countries — many of which were colonies of developed ones — were not allowed to build the necessary infrastructure for their own development.
“We believe that all should have a voice in the governance of an international network. We believe that legitimate governments as the true representatives of their country, should have an increased voice in the governance of the internet.”
The minister, however, emphasised that “nothing is further from the truth” than the perception that South Africa was “anti-Icann”.
She said: “We have seen a significant change in the governance of the internet since the establishment of Icann.
“I am advised that Icann itself has been through significant changes and continues to transform itself from a club of digital haves to include the have-nots. This can be seen in the increasing role of the government advisory committee and the ccTLD community in Icann, the geographical diversity in its office bearers and the opening of an office in Europe and the planned establishment of an Africa office in the near future.”
She noted that there was provisional recognition of the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) as an official regional internet number registry, the last stage before full recogntion. She also noted the re-delegation of the South Africa ccTLD as .za – I-Net Bridge