Not-a-pilot
I'm a fairly frequent visitor to Joburg and my experience of their ATC has been generally pretty good. There are certainly many destinations where I'm waiting for ATC to drop us in "it" but Joburg isn't one of them.
I was there shortly before this incident and, as far as I can remember, there is taxiway edge lighting but I don't think there was taxiway centre lighting or, if there was, it wasn't switched on.