AFRINIC and contempt of court: the orders it did not obey

Yes.

The Court’s own judgment records it. On 13 July 2021 the Judge in Chambers restrained AFRINIC from acting on its Board resolution of 8 July 2021 to end our membership, from freezing or reclaiming the addresses allocated to us and from denying us access to its WHOIS database. The order was served the same day. The judgment of 19 July 2022, reported as 2022 SCJ 253, records what those then running AFRINIC did with it: AFRINIC “failed to comply with the aforesaid order and deliberately flouted the duly served order dated 13 July 2021”.

Only after a warning of contempt proceedings, as we reported at the time.

On 15 July 2021, two days after the order was served, our counsel told the Judge that AFRINIC was still not complying with it. AFRINIC then gave the Judge an undertaking to comply with the order in full, with no condition attached, and was told the consequences of a breach. Even then AFRINIC’s management restored our membership only that night, after the warning. For two days the addresses our customers’ networks run on, operators in 60 countries who keep hundreds of millions of people online, depended on an order that AFRINIC’s management would not obey.

No.

On 25 November 2021 AFRINIC’s counsel withdrew it, at a sitting before the Acting Deputy Master and Registrar and not before the Judge who had recorded it. The undertaking had been given without condition, and nothing had been asked of us in return. Days later, on 1 December 2021, AFRINIC’s management wrote that our services “may come to an end at any time”. On 3 December 2021 the Court restrained AFRINIC from terminating our membership until the dispute is finally determined, and from acting in breach of its undertaking. Of the withdrawal, the judgment of 19 July 2022 says: “I will not comment on the propriety of the procedure adopted to withdraw an undertaking given before a Judge although I cannot turn a blind eye in the interests of fairness and justice.”

Yes.

On 3 August 2021 we lodged a contempt of court application, asking the Court to declare that the order of 13 July 2021 had been “deliberately and willfully flouted” until it was discharged. The judgment of 19 July 2022 records it, and records that AFRINIC’s undertaking, given on 15 July 2021 and withdrawn on 25 November 2021, “triggered various other applications related to the breach of the undertaking, including contempt of court cases”. When we went back to the Court on 3 December 2021, AFRINIC’s management asked it to treat our applications as an abuse of its process. The Court refused: Cloud Innovation “cannot be taxed for resorting to an independent court to safeguard its rights”, and upholding AFRINIC’s objection “would imperil the future administration of justice”.

No.

He signed an undertaking to the Court and did not keep it. On 11 June 2025, on AFRINIC’s own application, the Supreme Court ordered that AFRINIC’s register of members be rectified to add us as its member, and recorded AFRINIC’s written undertaking, signed by the Receiver, to rectify its records within 15 days. The 15 days passed without rectification. We had to have the judgment executed ourselves: the Court drew up its order as a rule on 9 October 2026, and it is the Registrar of Companies’ record of AFRINIC that lists us as a member from that date. The Receiver’s answer, on 29 October 2026, was a legal notice asking the Registrar to remove our entry. It cited no court order. An officer of the Court who disagrees with an order goes back to the Court.

We take it to the Court that appointed him.

Our communiqué of 3 November 2026 sets out four steps. We will bring the Receiver’s conduct before the Bankruptcy Division of the Supreme Court and seek contempt sanctions, directions, costs and his removal; file a formal complaint with the Director of Insolvency; notify the Registrar of Companies not to entertain his request to remove us, since our entry rests on the Court’s orders and rule; and respectfully ask the Prime Minister for an investigation, within the Companies Act, into AFRINIC’s membership. We act strictly within the law and through the Courts, and we reserve all our rights as regards contempt of court.

Because a court order is what stands between a registry’s management and the networks it can cut off.

What stood between our customers’ networks and AFRINIC’s management in 2021 was an order of the Supreme Court of Mauritius, and those then running AFRINIC flouted it. A registry keeps records; it does not hold the power of a state, and it is not above the courts. We defend the rule of law, judicial authority and the constitutional separation of powers, because every network that depends on a registry depends on them too.