noticeboard.ru.ac.za

2012/07/10 - Unscheduled Internet Outage
About half an hour ago, we lost access to the international Internet for reasons as yet unknown.

You will likely experience this outage as an ERR_DNS_FAIL or ERR_CONNECT_FAIL error when trying to access websites hosted outside South Africa (even those ending in .za). When accessing secure (https://) web sites, your browser may report that the connection has timed out or the site is unreachable.

The issue was reported to TENET's service desk shortly after it happened.
I've just had confirmation that this outage affects all South African universities, and is a result of two concurrent failures on the SANReN national backbone (East London -> Durban; Pretoria -> Durban). As a result we're not able to reach the SEACOM fibre optic cable, which terminates in Mtunzini and is connected via Durban.
post.5532625