The Proudly South African website was inaccessible for most of December 2021 and January 2022, and a search of its site history on Internet Archive revealed that the website went offline on several occasions before that.
An industry source told MyBroadband that the site was infected with malware and taken down by the hosting provider.
MyBroadband contacted Afrihost, which hosts the website, and it told MyBroadband that Proudly South African requested that its website be disabled in December.
The website was eventually restored on Tuesday, 18 January 2022 after MyBroadband contacted the organisation for comment.
“Websites going down is not an unusual occurrence and is something that happens even to the biggest tech companies all over the world,” said Proudly SA public relations manager Deryn Graham.
“Proudly SA is no different in that regard. It is regrettable that our service has been interrupted but we are working on the site before putting it up again.”
Proudly South African is a taxpayer-supported programme that receives funding from the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition (DTIC).
According to Proudly SA’s annual report, it received R37 million from the DTIC in 2021, and this amount will increase to R42 million in the next financial year.
It also charges membership fees for organisations who wish to display the Proudly SA mark on their goods and services and be listed on the RSA Made website.
It should be noted that the RSA Made website was not affected by this outage.
Proudly SA’s membership base is around 1,800 strong, with 243 companies joining last year.
However, only around 70% of members renewed in the 2019/20 financial year, resulting in an overall decline in membership fee revenue.
Proudly SA made approximately R3.6 million per year in membership fees in its last financial year.
According to its report, Proudly SA’s salary bill amounts to approximately R20 million per year.
MyBroadband asked Proudly SA how much it pays for IT services, including salaries.
“All our IT/website content is done in-house although we have a website host, for which service we pay,” Graham stated.
The “buy local” campaign was launched in 2001 by a collection of government, business, labour, and community organisations.
Its purpose is to encourage local investment and the consumption of local products to combat poverty, inequality, and unemployment in South Africa.
Companies that meet the prescribed standards — and pay their fees — have the privilege of using the Proudly SA logo to identify their products and services.
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