Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - will a missed flight cancel my itenerary on sa?

i dont know if i am posting this in the right place but here it goes.
I have a reward ticket on saa from lhr to nelspruit, nelspruit to cpt and then cpt back to lhr. My problem is that the flight from nelspruit to cpt connects in jnb and there is no award availability till hours later, so i am schedualed to have a 4 hour lay over. If i buy my own ticket from jnb to cpt and take my award from nelspruit to jnb but happen to "miss" my flight from jnb to cpt will i loose the rest of my itenerary. I can not just make the award from nelspruit to jnb as then i will have an open jaw and a stopover. Thanks for your help.

If you don't show up for a flight, yes, the remaining segments will be automatically cancelled.

When checking in at Nelspruit, ask SAA if there is any way you can standby or get on for an earlier flight connecting at JNB for CPT as you 'suddenly' realised that there is a horribly long connection at JNB. (Act stupid as if you only just found this out). Generally on the day of departures, airlines might very well just let you get on what's available. They may not need to seek award availability. But that's generalising as I don't know if SAA will do that.

If that fails, then tell SAA that you would wish to buy a seperate ticket between JNB-CPT for an earlier flight and that Nelspruit is to check you through to JNB only. (Remember to tell them to cancel the original JNB-CPT flight.) You might add that you'll be buying JNB-CPT on Comair since SAA is so unaccomodating... maybe that'll give them the incentive to do something!

I love CPT. Give my regards to Mother.

Good luck.