Station News · May 2026
Why Your JustGospel Stream Dropped: And What Was Really Going On
It wasn't load shedding. It wasn't us going off air. South Africa's internet was under attack, and your connection got caught in the crossfire.
If you tried to tune in to JustGospel over the past few weeks and found yourself staring at a buffering wheel, or your stream cut out mid-worship, or the website just wouldn't load. You weren't alone, and it had nothing to do with us going off air.
South Africa's internet was under attack. A serious, coordinated, large-scale cyber attack. And if you felt it in the Vaal Triangle, in your lounge, on your phone, that's because the attack hit so deep into the country's digital infrastructure that it disrupted networks from the inside out.
Let me explain what happened, in plain language.
What Actually Happened
Between 18 and 20 May 2026, a group of cybercriminals launched what security experts are calling a "carpet bomb" assault on South Africa's internet infrastructure. They didn't target one company. They didn't hit one server. They flooded entire networks simultaneously: multiple hosting companies, internet service providers, and connectivity operators, all hit with so much fake traffic that legitimate data simply couldn't get through.
The companies hit included some of the biggest names in South African internet infrastructure: Xneelo, 1-Grid, Host Africa, Domains.co.za, Network Platforms, and Liquid Intelligent Technologies. Even Seacom, the undersea cable operator that carries a massive portion of South Africa's international internet traffic, was affected.
"At its peak, the attack traffic on just one of those companies hit 676 Gigabits per second, roughly the equivalent of trying to push a dam's worth of water through a garden hose. The pipes simply couldn't cope."
When those pipes get clogged, everything downstream suffers. Your stream. Your email. News sites. Banking apps. SARS eFiling. All of it. Major websites like News24 and BusinessTech briefly went down. Thousands of businesses across the country lost access to their cloud services and customer platforms.
Who Did This and Why
A group calling itself "Black Matter" claimed responsibility, though security experts believe that name is borrowed. The original BlackMatter ransomware group disappeared years ago. The real identity of the attackers remains unknown. What is known is that they sent ransom emails to several hosting companies demanding payment in cryptocurrency, and the amount they asked for, roughly R16 000, made no financial sense whatsoever given the tens of thousands of US dollars it cost them to run the attacks.
That mismatch is what's troubling the experts most. When something costs you far more to do than you're asking to be paid, money isn't really the motive. Security specialists believe the attacks may have been a way of probing South Africa's internet infrastructure, testing its weak points, locating its pressure points, seeing what breaks and what holds. In essence, mapping the country's digital backbone for potential future attacks.
None of the affected companies paid the ransom. They refused. That was the right call.
What It Felt Like on Your Side
If you noticed your JustGospel stream dropping, buffering repeatedly, or simply refusing to connect during this period, that was the direct result of this attack rippling through the infrastructure our stream relies on. Our stream runs on platforms like Zeno.fm and iono.fm, and our website connects through the same affected network backbone. When those networks were flooded with junk traffic, your connection to us got caught in the crossfire.
It wasn't a power cut. It wasn't load shedding. It wasn't a technical fault on our side. It was South Africa's internet being used as a battlefield, and ordinary listeners bore the collateral damage.
We're Still Here
JustGospel broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to 33 countries. That mission doesn't pause for criminals. During the disruption, listeners in other countries on more stable international infrastructure were still receiving us clearly, and that confirms the issue was network-level, not station-level. The signal was going out. The road to get it to you was blocked.
We continuously monitor our platform footprint across Zeno.fm, iono.fm, Radio Garden, TuneIn, Online Radio Box, and the JustGospel app to make sure you always have a way in. If one door gets blocked, there are others.
And honestly, if ever there was a time South Africa needed the kind of content we carry, it's right now. The nation is under pressure on multiple fronts: economically, socially, and now digitally. The Word doesn't stop. The worship doesn't stop. Neither do we.
How to Keep Connecting If It Happens Again
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We are grateful for every listener who stayed patient, checked back in, and kept tuning in through the disruption. You are why this station exists. The signal carries on.