South African’s internet should be back to normal thanks to speedy repair work done by the Ile D’Aix vessel at the cable break of the West African Cable System (Wacs) – just in time for a lockdown weekend binge.

The South African National Research and Education Network (NREN) confirmed that the cable had been repaired on Saturday morning.

A second, different break of the South Atlantic Telecommunications (SAT-3) undersea cable was fixed by the Leon Thevenin vessel on Thursday.

This brings to an end another set of unusual circumstances where two undersea cables broke at the same time, resulting in slow internet across the country. Earlier this year, South Africans also suffered slow internet after an unusual double cable break.

The latest outage inconvenienced South Africans who are trying to work from home, after the country went into lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus, more than a week ago.

The Sat-3 fault was located in a similar area to the previous break in January, which was apparently caused by a short circuit. This was due to intense pressure from being trapped under heavy sediment carried by the flow of turbulent waters from the Congo River into the submarine canyon where the cable runs.

Wacs and SAT-3 are segments of a 25 000km undersea cable which connects Africa to Europe.