Hey Holodoc, thanks for the warm welcome, and the interest in Lego in South Africa.
It's a challenge sometimes, specifically getting parts for MOC builds. We have about a dozen or so serious Bricklink store, but no real Technic specialists. Also, our postal system is reaaaalllly bad, so I have to ship stuff twice, one from within Europe to a postbox / consolidation service in England, and then from England to Johannesburg. This makes the hobby even more pricy (I just paid $80 to ship $250 in Lego, from six Bricklink stores, which still excludes duties and customs stuff).
Our first Lego certified store is opening later this month about 20km from where I live, so yay, we have that to look forward to. We struggle to get exclusives and VIP points, and also we don't have access to shop.lego.com (they refuse to even ship to my postbox in England).
Set prices are pretty much in line with overseas, I guess. A series 18 Minifigure cost R60, or €3,70 (not sure what they cost there), the 42083 Bugatti Chiron cost R6000 (€375) vs €370 on lego.com. A brickhead costs R370 (€23) vs €23 online. However, the cheapest 75192 Millenium Falcon will cost you €1000 minimum - a lot more than in Europe.
We have four LUGs in South Africa, I'm part of the South African LEGO User Group. We have around 80 AFOL members, most of which are contributing, exhibiting members. In a year, we will exhibit 4 to 5 times across South Africa, but mainly Johannesburg and Pretoria where most of our members are. We got RLUG status last year, making us the first recognised LUG in Africa as far as we can tell. Although we are based in Johannesburg, we have members from across the country. Our sister LUG, CapeLUG, is based in Cape Town. The other two are jhbLUG (also Johannesburg based) and BuffLUG (after Buffalo City, is based in East London).
I so want to build the ball factory, but I'd have to spend a fortune on parts and I'm not sure how well it would perform under pressure. Also, I built a few Akiyuki models and while they're great to look at, they're not always reliable to run for an entire weekend at an exhibition. I've built a few of my own models, but most of my 'display' models are reliable models designed by Maico Arts. I did build Akiyuki's Six Head (surprisingly reliable for exhibitions, still have it) and the Strain Wave Generator (not as reliable, stripped for parts), you can them and some of I've built at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcuWe_XMSMfC8aqcdYsJ0ig, as well as a bridge which I designed at https://www.facebook.com/groups/LEGO.Technic/permalink/2144356355636386/ (you may need to apply to join the group, the video quality isn't that great, so I did not put it on YouTube).
We are exhibiting the GBC as a LUG in August, I will share photos and videos after the event.