As I understand it, South Africa is dependant on one undersea cable for internet connection to the rest of the world. The Asian experience suggests we are more than a tad vulnerable to major disruption.

The chaos in Asia's internet service sparked by an undersea earthquake shows the region's cable network is too fragile and overly reliant on connections to the United States, industry observers said on Thursday.

Millions of people across Asia were enduring a second day without full internet services after a 7,1-magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan late on Tuesday and disturbed several massive offshore submarine cables that link Asian countries with the US and beyond.

"Instead of being so dependent on connections to North America, Asia might want to spend some money on connecting to Europe," said Ross Veitch, who set up Yahoo! South-east Asia and is now the chief products officer with travel search engine Bezurk.com.

China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and elsewhere all experienced disruptions to internet services after the quake hit.
full story from M&G here