You were fortunate not to have been placed in the horrible cells that SA Immigration use to detain their undesirables, although to be honest I've never known of a white person to be held there. I've seen some miserable detention areas in my time, but these were truly far far worse than anywhere else. There is a room about 30 square meters large with about 5 sets of quad-level bunks and a single open latrine in the corner. A single grill around 2ft by 3ft around 8ft off the ground is the only source of sunshine. This room is used to house around 40 men, many for 2-3 days at a time. Grown men were in tears, banging on the bars and begging to be let out for fresh air or sunlight. A similar situation evidently exists for the women, but I did not get to visit that area. In many cases, the only "crime" these people had committed was having "insufficient funds" for their stay in South Africa. I've even seen passengers who MISCONNECTED due to no fault of their own be thrown into these cells as they did not have sufficient cash to overnight in the transit hotel and SA Immigration will not let airlines sponsor transit visas in these cases.

I also remember one memorable morning last December when an entire airline crew was detained for 30 minutes because they didn't have "return tickets". Never mind that they had just flown the darn plane in and were flying the next plane out and did so every few days... The law says that all foreigners must have a return ticket and it doesn't seem to have an exemption for operational airline crew. It took having to escalate the matter to the senior manager before they were willing to let the crew go to their layover hotel.

SA Immigration is a complete joke and the way they treat passengers is completely reprehensible. They make the US CBP look quite humane in comparison, and coming from me that is stinging criticism indeed.