Oh man, sorry for your experience. I'm not remotely surprised. It's SAA after all. That's how anything touched by the government "functions" in ZA.

$300 and $500 would have been really sweet prices if accepted. How full was your flight in economy?

I recently did JNB-CPT but business fare was more than reasonable ($220 ow) so didn't risk it with bidding. The experience was shameful though. It really felt like they not only not try hard, but quite the opposite. I picked a morning departure on A330 and hard product was superb of course, especially for a short domestic hop. The lounge at JNB - huge line at the entry and only 1 staff slowly processing all bank cards holders. They didn't bother to park a fully loaded jet at domestic jet bridge both at JNB and CPT, so had to be bussed both on departure and on arrival. Funny enough at CPT they didn't park it at international jet bridge either, so both arriving from JNB and departing to GRU pax had to be bussed. The food was disgusting and simply inedible, powdered coffee, no IFE, no pillows, no headphones.