Dorf I am not so sure.
She gave them a left turn the long way around to start with which she followed up with a string of rapid fire instructions including a range of level instructions. If indeed the initial instruction had the nose swing through a northerly direction in its way to 180 and she changed the direction of turn in a subsequent instruction then the machine is going to head north(ish) as it changes the direction of turn, something not easily discernible from the radar paint - coupled with a lag in the radar display vs the actual aeroplane and there is scope for a disconnect.
These guys do not have English as a first language and given her voice got higher and louder with each instruction they would be sitting there go "wtf" in their native tongue trying to figure out what the hell she wanted them to do.
If the aeroplane was turning left and then she countermanded the instruction with a right turn then getting a heavy fast jet (I.E. A heavy jet going fast, not a fighter for the pedants) to change direction isn't a snap roll type of thing and if you then add in the possibility (though I thought you would hear it in the background of their radio transmissions) the egpws going ape**** then there is the recipe for a cockup. There is the added question of whether in the 777 the autopilot always goes the shortest way to a heading or whether it goes in the direction the heading knob is turned. I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if it takes the shortest turn to the selected heading, so to do a long way around turn you have to turn the heading knob slowly(ish) to get nose to within 180 degrees of the assigned heading before dialling in the assigned heading. Throw in some rapid fire instruction and directions of turn with the oddball "southbound" instruction and there is even more complication.
All in all the start of the problem was the first instruction and it unravelled from there.
I have flown in and through most continents and I find the us Atc to be challenging at times because of the rapid fire instructions that are not necessarily standard phraseology. South America is the worst because I can't for the life of me understand the accents at times, Russia is surprisingly good, though for some reason they always sound like they have a bucket over their heads.
I agree SA is important but whether it was the time and place to start the discussion about the direction of turn when they got the initial instruction is debatable, particularly from a cultural and language interpretation perspective.
In some other jurisdictions the **** would have started hitting the fan and not long afterwards a different voice would have come on frequency as the initial controller got stood down.