Shot in the dark: travel to SA on expired SA passport

This is a speculative post - I don't know whether anyone can actually help. I am unable to travel back to SA on my SA passport (I am naturalised British with dual citizenship) as my passport is expired. As the SA consular affairs is insanely backlogged and awfully slow, it is going to take my 8+ months to be able to travel back to see my family. I have heard anecdotally of people managing to travel on their expired passport and being let through border control, under (verbal) condition to renew their passport locally.

Does anyone know about this and have any advice to offer? At the moment it seems like it will be 8+ months before I will be able to travel.

The things I'm unsure about are:
1. Will the airline allow me to travel?
2. How likely is it that I will get cause issues requesting a visa and travelling on my UK passport

Which country do you mean by SA, does it require a visa for British citizens to travel to?
Any documents on you that can prove you're a citizen?

In my country's embassies you can request a "return confirmation" if your passport is expired/lost abroad, allowing you to come back to your country once. There should be a way for your country's citizens to go back home in similar circumstances. Look into it, maybe you can make use of this. Or maybe a letter confirming you're a citizen of that country from an embassy will work.

And you might've needed to post it into "Other countries" section.

Thanks for the reply, I'll look into moving the post - I meant South Africa, and will check about the return confirmation, have not heard of that before.