Introduction

Definitions

Our Agreement

1. Our Agreement governs the contractual relationship between us.
2. Unless expressly provided to the contrary in our Agreement, if there is a conflict in meaning, the following precedence ranking will apply (from highest to lowest):
   • the Specific Terms;
   • these Terms of Service;
   • the Acceptable Use Policy;
   • the Privacy Policy;
   • other policies that may be introduced by us from time to time which we notify you of;
   • any documents incorporated by reference in our Agreement.

Amendment to our Agreement

1. Sizwe Africa IT Group reserves the right to make changes to the Agreement at any time without notice. An updated version of the Agreement will be posted on the website.
2. It is your responsibility as a diligent user to check any amendment posted on the website.
3. If you object to any amendment, you may terminate your relationship with us under clause

Customer Status

1. The Customer may be an incorporated entity (such as a company or close corporation), trust, partnership, or individual.
2. If a person enters into our Agreement:
   • in a representative capacity on behalf of a Customer who is an incorporated entity;
   • on behalf of an unincorporated entity; or
   • in any other representative capacity recognised in South African law, the person warrants that:- they are legally authorised to do so and indemnifies Sizwe Africa IT Group against any loss or damage that we may sustain resulting from the person’s lack of authority; and- all the information supplied to Sizwe Africa IT Group at any time relating to the entity, trust, partnership, association or other person who they represent is true, accurate, and complete.
3. We reserve the right to treat all misrepresentations by you or the person representing you as fraud. The person representing you indemnifies us against any loss or damage that we may sustain resulting from the person’s lack of authority.
4. If we discover that you have fraudulently contracted to receive Services or that your representative has contracted without contractual capacity to do so, we may end our Agreement or Services immediately without any further notice to you and you may not claim any restitution or refund of any amount you have already paid, regardless of whether you have used the Services or not.
5. When requested, you must give us sufficient proof of the authority of the person who takes any action or executes documents on your behalf for our Agreement. This includes providing proof that the authorised signatory of your bank account has permission to debit your account.
6. If there is a dispute between individuals or entities you are involved with (including partners, shareholders, trustees, employees), we may act on the representation of a person claiming to be duly authorised to represent you, without having to independently verify the authority.
7. You indemnify us from any action or inaction based on the representation in 1.5.6. If, however we ask you to give Sizwe Africa IT Group independent verification of the authority of any individual, you must provide it to us in a format we find reasonably acceptable.

Service fees

1. You must pay all service fees, as soon as they become due.
2. You must pay the service fees, according to the frequency of payment you select.
3. Where applicable, we will give you a VAT invoice in electronic format. You agree that by submitting an application to us when making application for Services, that the application is seen as your confirmation to accept electronic invoices for claiming input tax.
4. If you pay your service fees by debit order, you authorise us to make the necessary transfers from your designated bank account at the beginning of the month as per your preferred frequency of payment for the duration of our Agreement. You must put the debit order in place within seven days of the Commencement Date. A rejected debit order will accrue a handling fee, per rejection.
5. We reserve the right to amend or vary the service fees and any amendment or variation of the service fees will be seen as an amendment of our Agreement. If we amend the service fees, Sizwe Africa IT Group will give you at least 30 days prior notice. If you object to any amended service fees, you may terminate your relationship with us under clause 14.
6. You will not withhold any payment of any amount you owe us for any reason, (except for an actual breach by Sizwe Africa IT Group of our Agreement). In addition, you may not demand any discount, refund (other than under clause 1.7.8), or reduction in respect of any service fees you owe us.
7. The service fee includes Value Added Tax. You agree to pay any increase in Value Added Tax.
8. You may terminate the Service within:
   • seven days after the Commencement Date if you decide not to continue subscribing to the Service; or
   • within 30 days after the Commencement Date if we fail to meet the service levels for hosting services and email services as specified in the Specific Terms, provided that you exercise your right to end the agreement by giving us notice by email to billing@sizwe.cloud.
9. If you terminate the Service for one of the above reasons, Sizwe Africa IT Group will refund you any service fees. However, you are still liable for any third-party costs incurred during this period e.g. domain registration costs.

Monitoring

1. We monitor our hosting facilities, but not your specific activities. Where we have to intercept communications in accordance with the Regulation of Interception and Provision of Communication-Related Act, 70 of 2003 (“the Monitoring Act”), we will do this according to the requirements of the Monitoring Act.
2. With specific regard to the monitoring of content that is found on a website that belongs to you and which is hosted by Sizwe Africa IT Group, we have no knowledge of, nor interest in, Customer content hosted by us on your behalf using the Services and further we do not in any way contribute to or approve the content.
3. If however we determine that any content is in violation of any law (including the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996) or of the Acceptable Use Policy, or if we receive a takedown notice from ISPA, as contemplated in section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, we may
   • ask you to remove, amend, or modify the content;
   • terminate access to any Services or suspend or terminate any Services without notice;
   • delete the offending content without notice;
   • notify the relevant authorities of the existence of any content, make any back-up, archive, or other copies of any content; or
   • take any further steps as required or requested by any authorities without notice.
4. We may disclose any content, material, or data (including any of your data) if:
   • required by law;
   • lawfully asked to do so by any authorities, including the South African Police Services pursuant to a subpoena under section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977; or
   • according to a judicial, administrative or governmental order. We do not have to give you notice.
5. You will have no recourse against us if we act under this clause and you accordingly waive your right to make any claim or demand, or to institute any legal proceedings against us.

Security

1. All Customer Data allocated to you is personal to you and you will be liable for any loss or damage you or third parties have suffered because of your actions or the actions of a person to whom you have disclosed your Customer Data.
2. You authorise us to act on any instruction given by or purporting to originate from you even if it becomes clear that both parties have been defrauded by someone else, unless you have notified us under clause 1.9.4 before we acted on a fraudulent instruction.
3. If any security violations are reasonably believed to have occurred in connection with your account, we will investigate and, if necessary, change the relevant Customer Data, including access codes and passwords, and notify you immediately.
4. You must tell us immediately if any other person gains access to your Customer Data by contacting support@wearemahcine.co.za and give us your full co-operation in any investigation we carry out.
5. You indemnify us (hold us harmless) against any claim arising from:
6. your disclosure of your Customer Data to a third person;
   • the use of the Customer Data by a third person; or
   • any resulting action by you or a third party.
7. We reserve the right to take any action we find necessary to preserve the security and reliable operation of our infrastructure. You may not do anything (or permit anything to be done) that will compromise our security.
8. We have systems in place to assist our critical technical infrastructure to recover from a natural or human induced disaster. However, we do not specify any recovery time and are not liable for any loss or damage you suffer as a result of a disaster. You must make backups of your data. Nothing contained in our Agreement will be seen as a representation that any back-ups of data we have implemented will be successful or in any way will assist with disaster recovery.

Warranties

1. We warrant that Sizwe Africa IT Group has the facilities, infrastructure, capacity, and capability to provide the Services.
2. Despite this warranty, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available”. No warranty of any kind is given, whether express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, title, or non-infringement, except where such a warranty is specifically required by law.

Intellectual Property Rights

1. You must comply with all laws that apply to any intellectual property.
2. You must get our prior written approval before using any of our marks.
3. You grant us non-exclusive licence to use your marks so that we may exercise our rights or fulfil our obligations under our Agreement.
4. Other than as specifically provided for in our Agreement, we retain all Intellectual Property Rights employed in or otherwise related to our network infrastructure, business and the provision of any of the Services under our Agreement.

Customer Indemnities

1. You indemnify (hold us harmless) from any liability arising from civil or criminal proceedings instituted against us or for any loss or damage you or a third party have suffered because of any interruption or unavailability of the Services.
2. You indemnify us and hold us harmless against all losses you have suffered or actions against us as a result of:
   1. the use of the Services, or any downtime, outage, degradation of the network, interruption in or unavailability of the Services. This includes software or hardware service, repairs, maintenance, upgrades, modification, alterations, replacement or relocation of premises affecting the Services,
   2. non-performance or unavailability of any of the services given by an electronic communications network or service provider, including, line failure, or in any international services or remote mail Servers,
   3. non-performance or unavailability of external communications networks to which you or our network infrastructure is connected, and
   4. repairs, maintenance, upgrades, modifications, alterations or replacement of any hardware forming part of the Services, or any faults or defects in the hardware.

Suspension of the Services

Sizwe Africa IT Group may temporarily suspend its Service to repair, maintain, upgrade, modify, replace or improve any of its Services. Where circumstances permit, Sizwe Africa IT Group will provide prior notice of any service suspension to Customers. However, Sizwe Africa IT Group will not be held liable for any resulting loss or damage suffered as a result of the service suspension.

Termination

1. Sizwe Africa IT Group may terminate any Services on five days written notice to you.
2. You may terminate any Services on 30 days written notice to Sizwe Africa IT Group in one of these ways:
   • via the customer control panel,
   • via email to billing@sizwe.cloud from an authorised email address. We will confirm your request for termination via return email.
3. If you give Sizwe Africa IT Group notice of termination in any manner other than as specified above you may find that the notice was invalidly given and will not have any effect.
4. Breach: If you breach our Agreement, we may, without prejudice to any other rights that Sizwe Africa IT Group may have and without notice to you:
   • claim immediate payment of all outstanding charges due to us,
   • terminate or suspend your use of the Services, (which may include the deletion of your data)
   • terminate our relationship with you; or
   • list you with any credit bureau, Internet service provider list, or the South African Fraud Prevention Service.
     • By agreeing to our Terms of Service, you expressly consent to this.
     • In all instances, we may retain all Services Fees you have already paid and recover all of our costs associated, including legal costs on an attorney and own client scale (you will be liable to pay our attorneys’ fees) with your breach.
5. Return of hardware or software: Where you have in your possession any of Sizwe Africa IT Group’s hardware or software as a result of using the Service and the related Service ends, you must immediately return the hardware or software to us.

Force Majeure

We will not be responsible for any breach of our Agreement caused by circumstances beyond our control, including fire, earthquake, flood, civil strike, compliance with government orders, failure of any supplier of electricity as well as no electronic communication service etc.

Resolving disputes

1. A dispute concerning our Agreement exists once a Party notifies the other in writing, detailing the nature of the dispute, requesting that it be resolved as per this clause. The parties must refer any dispute to be resolved by:
   • Negotiation (direct talks to try and agree how to end the dispute); failing which
   • sent by prepaid registered post will be deemed to have been received 14 days after date of postage,
   • delivered by hand and delivered during ordinary business hours at the physical address will be deemed to have been received on the day of delivery.
2. Negotiation. Each party must make sure that their chosen representatives meet within 10 business days, to negotiate and try to end the dispute by written agreement within a further 15 business days.
3. Mediation. If negotiation fails, the parties must refer the dispute to mediation under AFSA’s rules.
4. Arbitration. If mediation fails, the parties must refer the dispute within 15 business days to arbitration (including any appeal against the arbitrator’s decision) under AFSA’s latest rules for expedited arbitrations. The arbitration will be held in English in Pretoria. The parties will agree and appoint one arbitrator. If the parties cannot agree on the arbitrator within 10 business days after the referral, the Secretariat of AFSA will appoint the arbitrator.

Exclusion and Limitation of Liability

1. Sizwe Africa IT Group will not be responsible for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages or losses arising from our Agreement. This includes loss of profits, revenue, anticipated savings, business transactions, goodwill or other contracts. It is irrelevant if this is due to negligence (carelessness) or breach of contract.
2. Our total liability to you is for direct damages up to a maximum amount of:
   • three months of your base hosting fee; or
   • R2,500; whichever is less.
3. Our liability for direct damages under clause 17.2 will be excluded where we are held liable because of your use of any third-party services or products which you accessed together with the Services, but which we did not provide to you.
4. This clause will apply even if you advised Sizwe Africa IT Group of the possibility of loss of damage prior to its occurrence.

Notices

1. You must send all notices to Sizwe Africa IT Group, whether for court process, notices or other documents or communications, at Sizwe House, 62 Waterloo Avenue, Samrand, Kosmosdal, 1682, South Africa.
2. We may give all notices to you by email to the email address you provided to us on the application form when you first subscribed for the Services.
3. Any notice or communication required or permitted to be given under our Agreement will be valid and effective only if in writing.
4. All notices you sent to us which are:
   • sent by prepaid registered post will be deemed to have been received 14 days after date of postage,
   • delivered by hand and delivered during ordinary business hours at the physical address will be deemed to have been received on the day of delivery.

General

1. Entire agreement: The Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the parties.
2. No Variation: No changes to our Agreement made by you are effective unless in writing and signed by the authorised signatories of both parties.
3. Waiver (giving up rights): Any favour we may allow you will not affect (or substitute) any of our rights against you.
4. Severability: If any term is void (invalid), unenforceable, or illegal, the term may be severed (removed) from and will not affect the rest of our Agreement if it does not change its purpose.
5. Applicable Law: South African law governs our Agreement.
6. Survival: Despite termination of our Agreement, any clause, which, from the context, contemplates on-going rights and obligations of the parties, will survive the termination and continue to be of full force and effect.