Phone CX in Canada (actually the US 800 number goes to them most of the time). CX out of YVR is quite helpful, has back office staff fluent in OWE (even if the phone agents are not) and with the recent rule change allowing Canada to issue tickets for anywhere in the world there really is no good reason to deal with CX in SA. Solves all of your problems. CX fuel charges are higher than AA but lower than BA (at least were the last time I checked), and overal CX in YVR was a pleasure to deal with. So CX hasn't let you down, if anything has let you down it is the poor search on FT which failed to reveal to you that ticketing in Canada was an option!

I had a long talk with the CX JNB office manager a few years ago, bottom line is that their hands are tied in terms of staff and they have one or 2 competent staff, the rest are problematic, and no way for CX to change this given the situation in SA.