A widespread Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday, 20 October disrupted access to a range of everyday apps, banking services, and work tools for thousands of users across the country.
The outage affected everything from Standard Bank’s online services to Snapchat, Canva, and popular gaming platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite.
Users also reported issues with cloud-based tools like Xero and Simple Pay.
What Went Wrong
AWS confirmed the problem stemmed from its US-EAST-1 region, where it observed significant error rates for requests to the DynamoDB API, a critical database service.
The issue appears to have been related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB endpoint – a vital process that enables systems to locate and access cloud-based databases.
“Our engineering teams are actively working on multiple parallel recovery paths and investigating the root cause,” AWS said in a status update on the AWS Health Dashboard.
Disruption Begins Early Morning
Reports of connectivity issues began spiking shortly after 08:45 (SA time), according to outage monitoring platforms such as Downdetector.
Users flooded social media with complaints, expressing frustration over banking interruptions, dropped video calls, and frozen gaming sessions.
One user on X (formerly Twitter) wrote: “Had a game crash and couldn’t reconnect to my work meeting either. Not sure which will be back online first.”
Wider Impact Reflects Cloud Dependence
The outage has once again highlighted how heavily both individuals and businesses rely on a small number of global cloud infrastructure providers.
Many of the affected services depend on AWS not only for database access, but also for computing power, content delivery, and user authentication.
“Even routine tasks like sending invoices or accessing banking portals can grind to a halt when key cloud services go down,” said a Cape Town-based IT analyst.
What You Can Do
While services are being gradually restored, organisations and users are encouraged to:
- Monitor the AWS Health Dashboard for official updates
- Prepare for residual latency or performance issues during recovery
- Consider reviewing redundancy and backup systems for mission-critical services
At the time of publication, AWS had not confirmed the full root cause or timeline for complete recovery but promised continued updates via its status portals.
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