Just thought I'd add a recent experience of the meal service on a JNB-CPT flight departing at 18:45 - so with full dinner service.
Jackets were proactively hung up. Newspapers were offered. There were no pre-departure drinks or hot towels. However, the cabin was extremely hot and just before push back the FA came round with a crate (literally) of chilled bottles of water. I suspect this was her own initiative and not standard. (This FA was exemplary I must say. So the service was almost certainly as good as it gets on SA.)
As soon as the flight got under way a drinks trolley was wheeled out. This included wine, beer and spirits - though, bizarrely, no gin because "our supplier has run out of gin".
How does the supplier of miniatures to an airline "run out" of something as basic as gin? At the same time as serving your drink you were asked if you wanted wine with your dinner and given a glass of whatever you ordered from a voice of 2 whites and 2 reds. (This was quite clever because food would arrive before the trolley had finished the round. But it left you in the rather awkward position of guarding two drinks and a mixer in rather turbulent conditions.)
Dinner consisted of a single tray holding a small salad, a main course (choice of lamb or chicken), a cube of cream cheese with some biscuits and a mystery mousse type of dessert. Warm bread rolls were also offered. Everything was edible and the lamb main was very good.
There were no hot towels after dinner either but on the tray was a sealed wet wipe. No further drinks were proactively offered and I didn't request any - but I assume they were available on request. There was no coffee/tea service either but presumably when your tray was collected you could just ask for it.
All in all a very satisfactory dinner service and a satisfying meal. (I still prefer BA/Comair in J for things like a choice of PDB, hot towels etc.)
As an aside: This was on an A319. The tray table folds down from the seat in front of you where it is folded with a hinge in the middle. On both my and my partner's tables the front part sloped downwards so much that your tray wanted to slide onto your lap. So you had to push your tray to the back part of the table to avoid a disaster. Most annoying.