Tomspur,
Forgiven!! (It was entertaining though!) I also liked the last sentence in you original post.
Capetonian,
SA406 was rumoured as sabotage, as someone high profile was on board, off the top of my head I seem to recall it was someone high up in the military.
Oh dear, the conspiracy theories!
Colonel Matheson, of the South African Railways Police, testified on investigations into the background of every passenger, crew member, and other person associated with the aircraft. Colonel Matheson negatived sabotage as a possible cause.
http://www.caa.co.za/resource%20cent...t%20ZS-CVA.pdf (I like that novel verb "negatived"!!)
I think that a modern enquiry would put a bit more weight on disorientation: at night, over the sea, coastline in sight (which could very easily create a false sense of 'horizon') and "The cloud base and visibility at East London Airport itself, as estimated by the Tower Controller, were below company limits for night approaches, but it is well known that the weather at East London "comes and goes"" and the possibility of fatigue on their 5th sector after all that already happened during that Flight Duty Period (a bit topical right now!); all of those added together are a recipe for CFIT off an NDB approach, which in today's investigations would probably be looked at a lot more seriously than then. The heart attack proposition seems to have been very much a case of "well, we can't think of anything else...".
So it is very likely that 2 out of the 3 were 'pilot error' (for whatever that term is worth) and the other was definitely 'procedures error' and is still frequently listed on Dangerous Goods courses. (Then, aside form those catastrophes, one could add the 'littler' incidents like putting a nosewheel into the sand next to the runway in Cape Town, or ramming a catering truck in Lusaka...)
Back to Navyjet707's question: Simply not enough people with enough money. Your question:
Or is it that the demand for air travel in South Africa just doesn't require more then a few airlines and so certain airlines will be pushed out of the market?
is what it all revolves around.