Home » Hackers Take Down SABC Sites, Warning “Things Are Going to Get Wild”

Hackers Take Down SABC Sites, Warning “Things Are Going to Get Wild”

Most of the websites of the SA Broadcasting Corporation, if not all of them, went down for hours on Sunday, after being hit by hacktivists acting against SABC’s COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s steps to allegedly censor the news. Anonymous Africa, which took similar action against the EFF a day earlier, said in a tweet early on Sunday […]

By SAPeople Staff Writer
12-06-16 19:39
in News

Most of the websites of the SA Broadcasting Corporation, if not all of them, went down for hours on Sunday, after being hit by hacktivists acting against SABC’s COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s steps to allegedly censor the news.

anonymous flag
Source: Twitter @zim4thewin.

Anonymous Africa, which took similar action against the EFF a day earlier, said in a tweet early on Sunday it would let the services come up again by 4 pm, warned that this was only the beginning of its action against the national broadcaster. Some of the SABC websites were reportedly up by 4.30 pm.

At about 2 pm Sunday, Anonymous Africa tweeted: “We will stop the attacks at SABC (for now) at 4 pm. We are not done yet, lots of action coming. Things are going to get wild!”

An hour later, it said, “Every time @SABC_COO censor the SABC more, we are going to come back, and keep hitting harder until @SABC_COO can not get up again. #Anonops” Anonymous Africa said in a tweet.

The hours the stations’ sites were down, as it happened, coincided with President Jacob Zuma attention the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal manifesto launch in Pietermaritzburg.

SABC’s Motsoeneng this week stopped the reading of newspaper headlines on its channels, apparently in a move to censor news about protests and burnings in South Africa.

Anonymous is a loose affiliation of activists and hacktivists around the world. Says Wikipedia: “Anons oppose Internet censorship and control, and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring.”

Anonymous Africa reportedly claims to be part of the Anonymous network.

A day before the SABC cyberattack, Anonymous Africa did the same to the Economic Freedom Fighter’s website. It said that in a few hours it would knock down the site because of the policies of the party. It used the words “racist” and “racists” numerous times.

“Racists can not even keep their website online,” said Anonymous Africa.

“Things are getting bad in South Africa. Zuma is stealing everything. Malema wants to burn everything. Time to knock on some doors #africa,” Anonymous Africa said.