As far as I'm aware, the Steam prices are designed to cater to America, Canada and to a lesser extent, Australia, as far as target markets are concerned. All three countries have (as far as I'm aware) a roughly equivalent middle-class income, and as a result their pricing scales to their target market.
The same is true of Japan, as an example; you could be a teenager helping construct small buildings such as homes and such (that really happens there, it's not just in anime), as a part time job during your holidays, and you'll still be earning a salary of R15k a month equivalent. Show me a teenager that's able to do the same building here in South Africa.
As a result I don't think it's even remotely accurate to call the pricing disrepencies a 'controversy'. It's simply that there isn't a Steam store that targets and is limited to South African buyers.
Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, the local distribution authorities (EA SA, Activision SA etc), to some extent dictate what pricing the retailers are supposed to be using, after which it boils down to local retailers competing with eachother for the lowest price that will still yield a profit.
Comparing apples to apples, games in SA are expensive. The average guy flipping burgers as a part time job here is lucky to earn R4k a month. The average guy going through college in America on a grant can still make minimum at $7/hour (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._minimum_wages), so by working for a mere 7 hours, or one saturday, they can afford a game off of steam at $49.95 in just that one day. Here in SA, with the going rate for burger-flipping being R4k/month as far as I'm aware, your average 'student' would have to work three out of 30 days to afford that one game at local prices.
That, in my opinion, is where the great 'controversy' lies.
If digital distribution is going to be the future of video games, I'm of the opinion that localization should become more strictly enforced so that we can have a South African targeted Steam with games prices that more accurately reflect our economy. In so doing, potentially, other countries' buyers should be unable to buy games for less from an SA steam store while we're not limited to buying from an American-centric store.
*edit* Also worth noting, I have previously seen in SA at BT Games stores a digital distribution assisting platform in the form of a booth that has the game container files (.gcf) used by Steam for digitally distributed games available for people to write to DVD or even dump on a flash drive; in this way, even if someone doesn't have uncapped/high speed internet and still has to go to a store, the facilities necessary to ensure adequate accessibility of the platform already exist.
