“It went out by mistake; it was published by mistake,” says ministry spokesman Robert Nkuna.

ITWeb this morning reported on the statement which was published on government Web site www.gov.za and accused Namespace of hankering “back to an era where a tiny minority controlled the wealth of the country”.

Namespace, the statement said, “functions as a forum of a few individuals who are only interested in boosting their unfettered egos at the expense of the entire country”.

“For close to a decade the activities of this organisation were shrouded in secrecy until a democratic process [the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill] … unearthed them.”

The statement was a response to a Namespace statement in which it said the provisions of the ECT Bill, which seeks to regulate the administration of SA's .za domain, were still not acceptable to it.

Nkuna, who could not be reached for comment this morning, said this afternoon that the statement should never have been published. He has since been in contact with Namespace representatives and says the two parties actually see eye-to-eye.

“We have no reason to fight,” he says. “We do not want to pursue what we said in that document and we are looking forward to talking to them about the issues.”

“The minister [of communications] said from the beginning that she tried to give our side of the story to the Internet industry. But people continued to be suspicious that government wanted to use underhanded tactics to control the Internet. That is not what she wants; she wants an inclusive system of domain name governance. That is also what Namespace wants.”

Nkuna says he will set up a meeting between Namespace and communications department director-general Andile Ngcaba, who could not be reached for comment today.

He also says the current version of the ECT Bill, the domain name provisions of which have been rejected by Namespace, would see the minister of communications take on only a “ceremonial role” in the .za administration.

Namespace spokesman Ryk Meiring, who was in contact with Nkuna this morning, reiterated the body's position that it would continue to negotiate with the government, despite any statements made by the ministry.

“As Namespace we believe that both us and the government have similar objectives,” says Meiring. “But neither party perceived that the other party's position could achieve that. Namespace believes statements have been made that are either unwarranted or factually inaccurate, but in order to ensure that this new opportunity to discuss the possibilities is not lost, we will not pursue them at this time.”

The ministry statement was still available on the main government Web site at the time of publishing.

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