Chaos and queueing at Cape Town Airport

My parents were due to fly out of CT airport with SAA via JNB to Harare early on the 2nd of December (SA304 due to depart at 0610). We arrived early at the airport (05:40 - 30 min before check in was due to close) to find the SAA queues snaking about 2/3 of the way across the departures hall.There were 3 SAA flights scheduled to depart for JNB around that time - at 0545, 0600 and 0610 - & yet there were hardly any people on the check in queues. At one point, the domestic checkin (not the bag drop) had one person serving the whole queue. We queued for an hour and a half, and all of the abovementioned flights left at least an hour late because SAA couldn't check people in or collect their bags fast enough because there were barely any SAA staff at the check in counters. There was no one giving out any information, except for one or two Swissport people who wandered past from time to time. Apparently a lot of SAA staff \call in sick"on weekends on a regular basis"