Just wondering why so long in South Africa

The National Party which governed South Africa in the apartheid era believed that television would have a corrupting influence on South African culture.

Albert Hertzog, South Africa's Minister of Posts and Telegraphs from 1958 to 1968, warned the parliament that "inside the pill of TV there is the bitter poison which will ultimately mean the downfall of civilizations." Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd likened television to poison gas and the atom bomb. The little box was a threat "to the racial struggle on a global scale," he declared. "TV would cause absolute chaos to South African life."

Well, I don't know about South Africa but I can answer this question of yours:

Just wondering [...] how long it took in other countries.

As I already explained in another thread, Italy began experimenting with radiovisual transmission in the 1930s but practical results wouldn't be seen until a few years later. Regular transmissions began on 4 June 1939 but TV sets were only available to the happy few belonging to party cadres and the richer strata. Content was produced by the E.I.A.R. (the State agency tasked with radio broadcasts) and many of the presenters too came from that background; pre-existing structures were adapted for TV broadcasting (which was done through an early variant of analog), a few ones were created from scratch and most, if not all, of the programming was done live with little recording going on: this also why almost nothing has survived to this day. TV service was hastily suspended after the country's entry in WW2 (10 June 1940) and the few archives were either scattered or lost during the war. ^1

However, the service was not resumed (seeing that technology had evolved in the meantime) and you'd have to wait until 1954 for the newly-established RAI to begin the first, widely available transmissions in Italy.

Please note that the links below concern Fascist TV:

• This is one of the few surviving early TV sets.

• Here's an interesting slideshow (requires Silverlight!).

• Here, here, here, here and here are some rare photos.

^1 Diego Verdegiglio's La TV di Mussolini (Castelvecchi, Roma 2003).