No refund by Airlink

My wife and I were booked from OR Tambo to Cape Town International on Thursday 29 September 2022 at 0620. Flight no 4Z893 and booking references RHJPAK and WXKBLV. We arrived at the terminal at 0530 and found ourselves at the back of a long que. I noticed that the check in counters for Airlink were not all operational and quite a few was unmanned. The que moved very slow and I was concerned that we would miss the deadline for check-in. By the time we got to the check-in station it has just turned 0600. After a few attempts to check us in - the Airlink official informed us that we are late and are unable to check in and subsequently are unable to travel to Cape Town. Flights were full and the tickets were forfeited and " no refund " was stated by Airlink. My complaint is that the check-in procedure was slow due to Airlink check-in staff arriving late and the check-in procedure was very slow. The on going load shedding could have caused the late arrival of staff. No " call out " was done to move passengers to the front of the que before the check-in closed. I subsequently incurred losses of R2 684 plus R1 183 = R3 867