South Africa's ZA Central Registry (ZACR) is tasked with administering second-level domains within the greater .ZA namespace, which includes .org.za. 

ZACR regularly undertakes technical streamlining as part of its continued and transparent efforts to maintain the country's enviable DNS (domain name system) proficiency.

In pursuit of this, and in line with a previous ZADNA (ZA Domain Name Regulatory Authority) decision to have all org.za domains transferred from a legacy system to ZACR-accredited Registrars, ZACR last week suspended all org.za domain names that had not migrated across to new Registrars. This total includes some 15 000 org.za domains.

According to ZACR CEO, Lucky Masilela, "Suspension does not mean deletion and all org.za domain name holders still have until 1 September 2017 to transfer their domains to ZACR-accredited registrars."

The ZACR has several times, over the course of a full year, communicated its intent to suspend non-compliant org.za domains from 1 September 2016 and to finally delete them on 1 September 2017. This has been communicated, inter alia, via the ZACR website's Registrar Noticeboard as well as via email. Apart from email communications, lists of org.za domain names were made available to Registrars at their specific request and an independent consultant was also appointed to contact registrants with a view to managing this migration process. 

"Any org.za names that have not been transferred to .ZA- accredited registrars by 1 September 2017 will no longer be reachable on the Internet. These domain names will then be deleted and made available for re-registration on a first-come, first-served basis," concluded Mr Masilela.

A complete list of domain names that remain on the org.za default registrar is available at org.za default registrar and will be updated periodically.

As a South African-built centre of operational excellence, the ZACR is responsible for the technical and administrative wellbeing of the entire South African presence on the worldwide web. It takes this responsibility very seriously, particularly in communicating and providing as much information and support to its clients. Information about the suspension of the org.za domains can be accessed at org.za suspension information 

The ZACR is a previous winner of the Best African Registry category awarded by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at the African Domain Name Industry Awards. Exact, up-to-the-minute registration statistics for all ZACR-administered domains are available on ZACR's website, www.registry.net.za