WINDOWS vs. LINUX

Linux is open source and is thus cheaper to run as most licences are open source.

Windows hosting takes more effort to maintain and is more often than not more expensive than the same Linux package.

Unless you specifically need ASP a Linux account would be fine.

Speed and stability between Windows and Linux servers are for the most part equal.

SA vs. INTERNATIONAL

The problem with hosting in South Africa is the high cost of bandwidth. For the same account one could easily get anything from 10 to 100 times more data transfer hosting overseas.

Sites hosted internationally are slower to respond than local ones.

FTP, SSH etc are remarkably slower with overseas accounts.

If your target market is abroad then hosting internationally will be much faster for them.

For downloading files the speed is the same for both.