Well, with AA miles your only options out of South Africa are BA or QR, and transferring your MR points to BA will stick you with BA's fuel fines. And transferring MR to Cathay Pacific will bump the number of miles needed for JNB-xHKG-JFK/EWR big time. So the Oneworld options are limited if you're trying to avoid fuel fines and don't want to switch planes in Doha.

I don't know which Star Alliance partners have fuel surcharges, but you could look at MR > AC (Aeroplan) > Turkish via IST, or SA straight back to the USA, or of course LH, but I seem to recall LH hits you with YQ.

I'd also just mention that - not knowing your travel plans/patterns/routes - South Africa is currently the cheapest origin point (in USD) for Oneworld business-class round-the-world tickets. A 4-continent DONE4 ticket (4 continents, up to 16 flights, good for a year, many rules) issued in SA has a base price of US$4278. You can easily harvest up to 100,000 AA miles with one of these, and almost certainly make or retain Platinum status with AA, or get a real head start on Executive Platinum. You'd have to end up back in Africa (anywhere, not just SA) within a year, and you have to cross both the Atlantic and the Pacific going in the same direction.

If you do a fair amount of domestic travel in North America or have a hankering to visit Australia, for example, you could use the RTW over the course of a year and maybe end up money ahead. You'd be using the UA flights to SA to "position" yourself for the RTW.

Details, if interested, on the Oneworld board.