Gain South African citizenship retrospectively?

I am British and my wife is South African. We got married in Cape Town. I got permanent residence in 1996 and we lived there continuously until 2007 when we moved to the UK, where we are now.

I never took up SA citizenship while we lived there. This was due to 2 pieces of mistaken information; 1) I was originally told that permanent residence would never expire, and didn't depend on being the spouse of a citizen after the first three years (not true), and 2) I thought that SA would require me to renounce UK citizenship before getting South African (not true either).

Had I known before we moved that permanent residence isn't completely permanent I would have applied for naturalization before we left, as I would never have ruled out returning. My wife has just got British citizenship, the kids have dual nationality. I feel like the odd one out!

So my question is, am I in a position to claim SA citizenship now, even though we moved to the UK three years ago? I've read the 1995 immigration act closely, and it would seem not, because if I applied now I would fail on the single criteria of not having lived there for the year before the application (and moving back for a year wouldn't be very practical at the moment). Is there a way around it, and if so, how to go about it?

Any relevant advice gratefully received!