Tech
South African Sites Scramble as Global Cloudflare Glitch Disrupts Access
Cloudflare Glitch Leaves South African Sites and Users Scrambling
Johannesburg, 18 November 2025 Internet users across South Africa are reporting widespread disruption as a global Cloudflare outage rattles websites and services that rely on its infrastructure. Several local observers claim popular South African tech and news platforms, including MyBroadband, BusinessTech, and The Citizen, may be intermittently down or inaccessible.
What’s Going On: Cloudflare Confirms Major Network Issue
Cloudflare posted a status update at 11:48 UTC, confirming that it is investigating a “global network issue” that could be affecting “multiple customers.” Meanwhile, its support portal provider is also experiencing its own outage, which is complicating service ticketing.
Engineers are reportedly working to contain the problem and restore full functionality. Some users say sites are already coming back online; others are still seeing HTTP 500 errors.
South African Impact: Local Sites Reportedly Affected
While Cloudflare hasn’t specifically confirmed which customer sites are impacted, local internet users and commenters are raising the alarm about South African platforms:
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MyBroadband Known for its heavy reliance on Cloudflare’s protection services, some users have claimed they can’t access MyBroadband’s site. Historically, MyBroadband has been affected by Cloudflare issues during previous global outages.
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BusinessTech Though there are no official outage reports from BusinessTech, the site is often cited by users as unreachable during the current disruption.
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The Citizen Similarly, some South African users report difficulties loading The Citizen’s site, but there is no confirmation from its publishers or a public status update.
It’s important to note that these are anecdotal user reports; as of now, none of these local publications has published a statement acknowledging a Cloudflare-driven outage.
Why It’s Hitting Now: Maintenance + Network Trouble
The timing of the outage coincides with scheduled Cloudflare maintenance in several major datacenters, including in Los Angeles (LAX) and Atlanta (ATL), raising the possibility that the planned work may have triggered or exacerbated the problem. During such maintenance windows, traffic is often rerouted, which can lead to instability or temporary service failures.
What South African Users Should Do
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Refresh & retry: If sites like MyBroadband or BusinessTech aren’t loading, try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache.
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Use alternative routes: If latency is high, switching your DNS settings or using a VPN might help temporarily.
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Stay updated: Follow Cloudflare’s status page or subscribe to its alerts, customers can receive notifications via email or webhooks.
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Report via other channels: If you run a business that uses Cloudflare, you may want to use your dashboard or the live chat (for Enterprise / Business) to escalate your issue, especially while the support portal is affected.
Bigger Picture: Why This Matters for SA
Cloudflare plays a critical role in powering and protecting websites globally and many South African tech companies and publishers rely on it. When Cloudflare goes down, it’s not just international platforms affected: local content, news, and commerce sites can also be hit, exposing how deeply intertwined South Africa’s internet ecosystem is with global infrastructure.
As the incident unfolds, Cloudflare’s teams are expected to provide more updates, and local publishers may issue statements clarifying the true scale of impact.
Cloudflare Outage Mostly Resolved, But SA Sites and Businesses Still Feeling the Ripples
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