If you have no major assets or debts and you and your spouse can agree it is possible to pay a fairly small amount of money. In practise it might be cheaper but there is nothing easy about it. You and your spouse go to the court wait in line, wait some more, wait some more, then discover you don’t have the right documentation, go home fix the documentation and go back again… rinse lather repeat. Its a great option if you have lots of time and patience, but you and your spouse have to have agreed to EVERYTHING before hand and arrive with all paperwork in hand.
I don’t know of any attorney who thinks it’s an efficient process. It gets advertised on the web a lot because its easy to sell and a lot of the lawyers who do sell it either try really hard to up sell you once you approach them or they have their secretary help you fill in a form that you could have done yourself and then charge you R1000 or more and send you on your way. Also remember once the divorce is granted the details are final. You may be able to change the maintenance amount but other than that you are stuck with it.