VIA AFRIKA TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1 ABOUT OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS

These terms and conditions together with our Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy (collectively, the “Terms“) will form a written contract between you and Via Afrika (“Via Afrika“, “we“, “us” and “our“) and will govern our relationship and your use of our Platforms and/or Services. When we refer to “Platforms” we mean all our websites, mobile sites, mobile apps, emails, social media platforms or any other technology or mechanism you may use to interact with us. “Services” refer to any products, goods, services or functionality offered, owned or operated by Via Afrika via our Platforms.

The general use of our Services, Platforms and any content on our Platforms is governed by our Terms. “Content” refers to any information, data, files, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, images, video, messages, comments, hyperlinks or tags and other material appearing on our Platforms or Services and all applicable copyrights, trademarks, patents, logos or other intellectual property rights displayed on our Platforms or Services.

We may amend the Terms from time to time. Any new version of the Terms will be published on our Platforms and will become effective from the date that we first published it. It is your obligation to visit our Platforms on a regular basis in order to determine whether any amendments have been made. By continuing to use our Platforms and/or Services after we published changes to the Terms, you agree to be bound by the changed Terms.

Some of our Platforms and/or Services may contain additional rules or terms from time to time, which may be relevant to specific Services you use or subscribe to. By using those Services, you agree to be bound by such additional rules and/or terms.

2 CONTENT ON OUR PLATFORMS OR SERVICES AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Our Content

Via Afrika owns or is entitled to use all of the Content made available on our Platforms or through our Services.

You may not, unless with our express consent ‑

• reproduce, publish, perform, broadcast, make an adaptation of, sell, lease, offer, expose or otherwise transfer or use for commercial purposes any Content;
• decompile or reverse engineer the Content, or reduce the Content to any format other than the format in which they were delivered;
• incorporate the Content into any other content for whatever purpose;
• remove any legal notices (copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notices) in or on the Content; or
• frame any portion of a web page that is part of our Platforms or Services.

You may retrieve, store, cite or refer to or print Content from any of our Platforms or Services for educational, research, non-commercial, private or personal use only, as provided for under South African copyright law.

Use of Content in electronic clipping services or personalised news services shall only be allowed if such electronic clipping service or personalised news service ‑

• does not copy or provide the whole article, as it appears on our Platforms or Services, but only provide a short summary of the contents of the article;
• acknowledges us as the source of the Content;
• provides a correct and working hyperlink to the source of the Content or article on our Platform;
• acknowledges writers, journalists, photographers and third party agencies as they are acknowledged on our Platform; and
• includes the date upon which the Content was sourced from our Platforms in the summary of the Content.

The caching of our Platforms shall only be allowed if ‑

• the purpose of the caching is to make the onward transmission of the Content from our Platform more efficient;
• the cached Content is not modified in any manner whatsoever;
• the cached Content is updated at least every 12 (twelve) hours; and
• the cached Content is removed or updated when so required by us.

You may quote small and reasonable amounts of Content available from our Platforms only if such quote is placed in inverted commas, the author is acknowledged and a hyperlink to the quoted Content is provided as a footnote to such quote.

Apart from bona fide search engine operators and use of the search facility provided on our Platforms, you may not use or attempt to use any technology or applications (including web crawlers or web spiders) to search or copy Content from our Platforms for any purposes, without our prior written consent.

All licenses and/or permissions granted in terms of this clause are provided on a non-exclusive and non-transferable basis and may be terminated or cancelled by us at any time without giving reasons therefore.

Your Content

You will retain ownership of any original Content which you may upload, transmit or store when using our Platforms or Services.

Via Afrika will own all compilations, collective works or derivative works created by us which may incorporate your Content.

You grant us an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide and royalty-free right and license to use, publicly display, publish, publicly perform, reproduce, distribute, broadcast, adapt, modify and promote on any medium, your Content which you may upload or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas on our Platforms or through our Services.

Any content you transmit or post to publicly accessible areas on our Platforms or Services shall be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. We shall have no obligations with respect to such Content.

Third Party Content

Our Platforms or Services may include, from time to time, advertisements from third parties and/or external links to other websites possessing their own content (“Third Party Content“).

You acknowledge that the Third Party Content ‑

• is beyond the control of Via Afrika and that any reliance on any representation, statement or information contained in Third Party Content is at your risk;
• cannot be verified by Via Afrika, and that Via Afrika cannot be expected to determine its accuracy or reasonableness; and
• may contain representations, statements or information which does not represent the views, opinions or beliefs of Via Afrika, its associates, directors or employees.

3 COMMUNICATIONS

You agree that Via Afrika or its affiliates may from time to time send you communications regarding new services or products launched or special offers or discounts which Via Afrika may negotiate for and offer to its users or subscribers.  All communications will abide by our Privacy Policy and applicable law. You will always be entitled to notify us in writing that you do not wish to receive or continue to receive such communications.

4 HOW TO RESOLVE DISPUTES WITH US

We offer the following process to help you resolve a complaint or dispute you may have with us.

Step 1: Contact our customer support department

Any queries or complaints in relation to our Platforms or Services can be submitted to us by contacting us using the information provided under “Contact Us” on our Platforms.

Step 2: Send us a notice of a legal dispute

Without prejudice to your rights in law, you are required to first approach us with any complaint or dispute and afford us an opportunity to resolve a compliant before you approach any relevant authority, court or other dispute resolution body, or refer the matter to arbitration as contemplated below.

Please direct all legal disputes to info@viaafrika.com. Your complaint should include the following ‑

• your name and surname;
• your account number, if applicable;
• the date on which the complaint arose; and
• a brief description of what gave rise to the complaint.

In the event of a billing complaint you should also include the following ‑

• a copy of the bill concerned or the particulars thereof, e.g account number;
• the reason for the dispute;
• the amount in dispute; and
• supporting information or documentation, if any.

5 Step 3 ARBITRATION

You may approach any other relevant authority or dispute resolution body or refer the matter to Arbitration as set out below, for resolution of the dispute, should you not be satisfied with the proposed resolution of the dispute by Via Afrika.

You agree that any dispute between us shall be referred to arbitration and finally resolved in accordance with the rules of the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa. Such arbitration shall be held either in Cape Town or Johannesburg, and conducted in the English language before one arbitrator appointed in accordance with the said rules. Any award will be final and not subject to appeal. This agreement to arbitrate shall be enforceable in and judgement upon any award may be entered in any court of any country having appropriate jurisdiction. A dispute shall be deemed to have arisen when either party notifies the other party in writing to that effect.

The arbitrator shall have the power to give default judgement if any party fails to make submissions on due date and/or fails to appear at the arbitration.

The provisions set out above shall not prevent either party from approaching any court of competent jurisdiction to obtain interim or other relief in cases of urgency.

You must send any notice or legal process relating to the Terms to the following address: Via Afrika, 11^th floor, 40 Heerengracht, Cape Town, 8001.

Any payment default by you arising from, or in connection with, your use of our Platforms or Services, will be excluded from the provisions of this clause and Via Afrika will be entitled to proceed to institute legal action against you.

6 THIRD PARTY GOODS, SOFTWARE AND SERVICES

We may offer services or products of third parties, or our Services in conjunction with that of third parties.

We provide such services or products subject to the terms, conditions and limitations imposed by those third parties.

If those third parties change, suspend or stop providing such services or products, we may similarly change, suspend or stop providing it to you. We may nevertheless endeavour to provide such a service in another way or by using another supplier or service provider.

When you acquire services or products from a third party through any of our Platforms or Services, you understand and agree that ‑

• we are not a party to the contract between you and the third party;
• we are under no obligation to monitor the third party service used by you;
• the third party will be responsible for all obligations under the contract including (without limitation) warranties or guarantees;
• you will evaluate the product or service and the applicable terms and conditions before acquiring the product or service.

7 SERVICE CHARGES AND PAYMENT

Before you subscribe to, purchase or use Services, check the amount due and make sure you understand how and when you must pay the service charges.

How you pay Service Charges

You will pay ‑

• recurring service charges monthly in advance by debit order; and
• other service charges as specified in any additional terms provided to you when you subscribed to Services or purchased goods.

If details of your bank account change, you will promptly provide us with the new details.

Non-payment

If you fail to pay a service charge or other amount due for any reason when due, we may ‑

• suspend your subscription to or use of the Services;
• terminate the agreement, and claim any amounts due to us.

We may charge you an additional re-connection fee if you request us to restore any Service, which was terminated, either at our instance or yours.

8 USER IDS

Any username, password or other log-in allocated to you or created by you when subscribing to or using our Platforms or Services (“User ID“) will entitle you to access the Platforms or Services, subject to you complying with the Terms.

Your User ID is personal to you. You ‑

• should keep your User ID confidential and not disclose it to any third party;
• should inform us promptly if a third party gains access to your User ID;
• are responsible for all payments, use of, or activity on our Platforms or Services under your User ID;
• will not do multiple log-ins (log-in at any one point in time more than once using the same User ID);
• will not circumvent our User ID authentication procedures or systems;
• are liable for any damage, loss or costs sustained by you, us or by any third party howsoever arising as a result of any actions by you or any third party using your User ID.

While a User ID is personal to you, we own it. You may accordingly not sell or otherwise transfer any entitlements thereto to a User ID.

You will also not retain any entitlements to your User ID once this agreement ends.

You will sign out from your account at the end of each session.

9 AVAILABILITY

While we endeavour to ensure that our Platforms and Services are normally available 24 hours a day, we shall not be liable if, for any reason, our Platforms or Services are unavailable at any time or for any period.

Access to our Platforms or Services may be suspended temporarily and without notice in the case of system failure, maintenance or repair or for reasons beyond our control.

10 SECURITY AND PRIVACY

We will be entitled to take whatever action we may deem necessary and reasonable to preserve the security and reliability of our Platforms and/or Services.

You may not use our Platforms or Services in any manner which may compromise the security of our network or any other network connected to our network.

We take reasonable steps to secure your payment information. We use a payment system that is in our reasonably opinion sufficiently secure with reference to accepted technological standards and the type of the transaction concerned.

Via Afrika will deal with your personal information in accordance with the provisions of our Privacy Policy.

11 RETURN, EXCHANGE AND REFUNDS

Via Afrika’s policy in respect of exchanges, returns and refunds depends on the type Services and the policy of the manufacturer or supplier thereof.

Where the Consumer Protection Act, No. 68 of 2008 (“CPA“) or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act No. 25 of 2002 (“ECTA“) applies to you, Via Afrika’s policy in this regard will comply with the requirements of the CPA and ECTA in relation to exchanges, returns and refunds.

Note that we do not provide any exchanges, returns or refunds on audio, video recordings, computer software or books sold online via our Platforms.

12 DISCLAIMER AND LIMITED LIABILITY

You use our Platforms and Services at your own risk.

While we endeavour to ensure that the information on our Platforms or Services is correct, we do not warrant the accuracy and completeness of Content on our Platforms or Services or that the Content and technology available from our Platforms or Services are free from errors or omissions.

 We may make changes to the Content on our Platforms or Services at any time without notice. The Content on our Platforms or Services may be out of date, and in this regard, we make no commitment to update such Content. 

To the extent allowed by law, we shall not be liable for any damage, loss or liability of whatsoever nature arising from the use or inability to use our Platforms or Services or Content provided from or through our Platforms or Services.

Our Platforms and Services are supplied on an “as is” basis and have not been compiled or supplied to meet any user’s individual requirements. It is your sole responsibility to satisfy yourself prior to entering into this agreement with us that the Services available on or through our Platforms will meet your individual requirements and be compatible with your hardware and/or software.

Information, ideas and opinions expressed on our Platforms or Services should not be regarded as professional advice or our official opinion and you are encouraged to consult professional advice before taking any course of action related to information, ideas or opinions expressed on our Platforms or Services.

Submissions of Content (like contribution to blogs, comments on articles posted), postings of any kind to our Platforms or Services and e-mails sent to our Platforms or Services are not editorially controlled by us and therefore we cannot be held liable for illegal or unconstitutional content (including, but not limited to, defamatory or harmful content).

13 GENERAL TERMS

These Terms are the sole record of the agreement between you and us, with neither party being bound by any express, tacit or implied representation or warranty not recorded in these Terms.

No agreement shall be concluded or amendment to these Terms effected merely by you sending a data message to our Platforms or using our Services.

Via Afrika may transfer its rights and obligations under the Terms to a third party without your consent.

You may not transfer your rights and obligations under the Terms to a third party without the consent of Via Afrika.

If any provision of the Terms is or becomes unenforceable for any reason, then such provision will be treated as if it had not been included in the Terms to the extent that it remains unenforceable and shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions of the Terms.

All provisions of these Terms must be treated as being qualified, to the extent necessary, to ensure that the provisions of the CPA are complied with.

The Terms are governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the Republic of South Africa without giving effect to any principles of conflict of law, with you consenting to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Republic of South Africa.

You agree that we may intercept or monitor all communications sent or posted by you to our Platforms, Services or our employees. You agree that the consent provided herein by you satisfies any “writing” requirement prescribed in law.

14 MORE ABOUT US

Via Afrika Proprietary Limited (registration number 1996/012379/07) is a company registered in the Republic of South Africa.

Via Afrika is a member of the Publishers Association of South Africa whose details can be found at www.publishsa.co.za. A list of officer bearers can be found at www.naspers.co.za.