The "CPI-Linked" Myth: How a million-rand company credit card and luxury rental cars are driving your next .co.za price hike
So ZADNA wants us to swallow a 6.2% price hike because of a "predictable, CPI-linked methodology" that ensures a "secure, stable and resilient .za namespace"?
Let's cut through the corporate spin and pack the actual facts into the bag. This isn't about the long-term sustainability of the .za namespace. This is a captive-market cash extraction by a statutory body whose own investigation report describes a
declined cash position, a decline that coincided with a spectacular run of executive spending.
For anyone tempted to take the press release at face value, an independent investigation report into ZADNA (reported by ITWeb in February 2026, and which led to CEO Molehe Wesi being placed on precautionary suspension) makes for spectacular reading. Let the numbers speak:
1. The Million-Rand Company Credit Card
In a single financial year (2024/2025), ZADNA's company credit card racked up
R1,006,403.03 across 352 transactions. The highlights:
- Travel: R498,730.76 across 36 transactions
- Entertainment: R280,677.25 across 115 transactions, that's an entertainment transaction roughly every third day, at what the report itself calls "expensive" restaurants
- Car rental, accommodation, membership fees, and more making up the rest
This is a regulator with roughly R20 million in annual revenue. They put 5% of it on the company card.
2. The Luxury Cars and the Wine Bill
The investigation didn't paint a picture of "cost discipline":
- Luxury car rentals: The CEO's car hire alone came to R195,772.63 in 2024/2025. The report states this "could have been significantly lower had a lower class of vehicle been selected." His response? He didn't personally request the luxury class, he just drove what was booked for him. For a year.
- Undocumented entertainment: The investigators recommended ZADNA claw back R236,505.84 from the CEO for entertainment expenses with no supporting documentation, plus an additional R11,252 specifically for wine consumed. When asked who was entertained and what benefit ZADNA got, the CEO couldn't consistently answer. The report calls him negligent in his recordkeeping duties as the entity's accounting officer under the ECT Act.
And here's the kicker: the report found
no formal policy breaches, because the credit card policy didn't specify what kind of entertainment was allowed or where. They spent over a million rand on the card and technically broke no rules, because there were barely any rules to break. That's the "governance" your registry fees are funding.
3. The "Inflation-Linked" Arithmetic
ZADNA claims these hikes are CPI-linked. Let's look at what registrars actually pay per domain:
- Oct 2023 baseline: R55.00
- Oct 2024: R61.00: marketed as a "5.23% CPI-linked adjustment." Get out your calculator: R55 to R61 is a 10.9% increase. They announced one number and charged another.
- Oct 2025: R65.00: a 6.56% hike, while SA inflation spent most of the period between ~3% and 4.5%
- Oct 2026: R69.00: a 6.2% hike, against CPI that hovered between 2.8% and 4% for months and touched 3% as recently as February, only reaching 4.5% in May on the back of fuel price spikes
Over three adjustments, the wholesale cost of a South African digital identity has jumped
25.5%. Cumulative CPI over the same window is nowhere close. "CPI-linked" is doing some very heavy lifting here.
4. History Repeating Itself
This isn't an isolated incident or "teething problems." Wesi is the
second consecutive ZADNA CEO to face disciplinary proceedings over financial governance. His predecessor, Vika Mpisane, was suspended in December 2018 and fired in July 2019 after a disciplinary process, with the board chair at the time citing "serious hybrid acts of misconduct including mismanagement of ZADNA funds."
Two CEOs in a row. At some point it stops being a personnel problem and starts being an institutional one.
The Real Picture
ZADNA is a monopoly regulator sitting on top of a captive market. Every co.za, org.za, net.za and web.za registration in the country flows through fees it sets. When your own investigation report describes a declined cash position after a year of luxury rentals, expensive restaurants and a seven-figure credit card bill, there's only one lever left to pull: squeeze the registrars, who pass it on to hosting companies, who pass it on to every SME in South Africa.
Communications Minister Solly Malatsi says he'll "crack the whip" on governance failures and wasteful spending across his department's entities. Great. Here's a simpler test: why should registrars fund an above-inflation increase before a single cent of that R247,000+ in recommended clawbacks has been recovered, and before anyone explains how a "5.23%" adjustment became 10.9% at the till?
Until then, call this what it is: a state-backed price hike to paper over a self-inflicted mess.
(Sources: ITWeb, 20 Feb 2026, "ZADNA probe exposes costly executive spend amid cash decline"; TechCentral, June 2024 and July 2026 fee announcements; ZADNA media statements July 2024 and July 2025; MyBroadband/ITWeb coverage of the Mpisane dismissal, 2019. Wesi has said he cannot respond to a report that has not been made available to him, and the investigation found policy gaps rather than formal policy breaches.)
