Passenger will not be allowed to board because she changed her surname

I bought return tickets in August 2017 for my mother to visit me in December 2017. The tickets were for a return flight from Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) to Cape Town (South Africa). Between August and December, she underwent a name (surname) change and went back to her ****en surname seeing as she divorced. The issue she faces is that her flights were all booked under her married surname, but now her new passport and Identification reflects her new surname. Long story short, due to this, she is not allowed to board her flights because the name reflecting on her passport that she will use to travel is not the same as the one that the ticket is booked under. Although that makes perfect sense, one would think that her providing her OLD passport which has the "correct" name as the ticket would suffice for identification purposes. Lo and behold, even that will not suffice because her passport is expired. (So because it has expired, does that mean she is no longer who she is??). What is interesting however is that the passport/ID is produced for the purposes of identification i.e is she who she says she is, and is she the person meant to board the flight. If one takes a closer look, although the passport numbers are different, the national ID numbers would remain the same. SAA, is this not proof enough that she is still the same person? Based on the pictures on the documents and her standing right in front of you at the check in counter, would you not be able to reliably discern that this is infact the right/same person? Even after producing documents from the High court approving the name change do you still not believe that this is the same person?? I think it's time that we stop forcing employees to blindly follow policies without the ability to use their own judgement and intelligence. Having employees say, "sorry sir, it's procedure" shows that you have ****** employees the right to apply their own intelligence in any situation because you do not have faith in them. What irritates me the most is that I am being forced to cancel her original flights and expect a refund after 21 days, and then re-book flights at double the initial cost. What you could have offered me was to re-book the flights at the SAME cost, with the updated details. Are you telling me that your systems are that dumb? Once a ticket is issued it cannot be re-issued by someone with the right authority in your organization??This is very pathetic for an established airline such as yours! For the prices we pay, we would expect better service and for you to empower your employees to use their common sense where applicable.