The following is a brief summary of the constitution of Namespace South Africa, the full text of which is available here. Details of the specific policies and procedures to be followed by the company are available here. The policies and procedures document also contains definitions of many of the terms used on this site.

Every single registrant of a domain in any of the subdomains of ZA will have the automatic right to free membership of the company. Membership will be on a one member, one vote basis, regardless of the number of domains registered, to prevent domain hoarders from having disproportionate sway.

The majority of the board (five members out of nine) will be directly elected by the membership. A further two memebrs will be appointed by ISOC-ZA (also an open memebrship organisation). One member will be elected by the registrars to represent their interests, and a final member may be appointed by the South African government, to represent their interests and to facilitate liaison.

Registration in all subdomains of ZA (with the exception of 'private' domains such as MIL.ZA and GOV.ZA) will be opened to multiple registrars. Anyone will be able to apply to become a registrar for any set of subdomains. Registrars will have to be accredited by the company, to ensure that they meet basic techincal and administrative criteria. These criteria will represent minimum standards, in order to minimise the barriers to entry and to encourage diversity.

In order to maintain the consistency of the central database for each subdomain, it will still be necessary to have some central co-ordination at this stage. This co-ordination will be provided by a 'central facilities provider' (CFP) for each domain. Since the CFP function is an unavoidable monopoly, the aim is to keep the function as small as possible to minimise overhead in the system (over time, the CFP function may become no more than a central trusted timestamping service).

The company will be funded by a small annual levy (no more than a few rands) on each domain registered in the public subdomains of ZA. This will be collected from the registrars. To ensure fairness and transparency, the levy will not be set by the board, but by the membership of the company (i.e. the registrants themselves). The membership will also have the final say on the budget of the company.

Transparency, accountability and consultaion will be the watchwords of Namespace South Africa. The company policies require it to publish details of all its decisions on the Internet. Many important decisions (such as the creation and deletion of domains) require prior public notification and comment.