I think you just emphasised his point
Well, if I use this definition of a bottom feeder: In the aquarium, bottom feeders are popular as it is perceived that they will "clean up" the tank. Generally, they are only useful for consuming the extra (fresh) food left by overfed or clumsy livestock; the added biomass of additional organisms means that the aquarium will likely be more dirty. Some specialized bottom feeders are more specifically sold as "algae eaters" to increase the amount of free oxygen and aesthetic appeal of a tank.
(From Wikipedia)
Then, lets assume that he meant by taking out a contract, I keep innovation/pricing in the country at the bottom of the international "mobile market" food chain and we, as South Africans, keep on eating the leftover crumbs from other countries (that doens't even really make sense, but whatever).
But this is not true - many other countries in the world (including the US) still lock their users into contracts. The US is the worst - they lock your phone to the network, they give you few options, they don't let you use your data as your wish, they bind you for two years, they penalise you for breaking contract, some phones are not "allowed" on prepaid - such as the iPhone (one can get it to work, though), the mobile operators dictate to the phone manufacturers how should a phone look and how it should operate and what bloatware should be on it etc. We are superior to them - even with our contracts!
Even Europe, where many of the countries are part of the union and they are really close to each other, have roaming agreements between countries with the SAME network (i.e. 3 in Austria and 3 in Italy only recently started to allow you to use the same data/minutes between the two countries - before this they had roaming costs).
Hell, my prepaid SIM that I bought in Austria charges me 4.60 EURO per minute to phone back "home" to Austria from South Africa!
So I might be stupid on a personal level to get a contract instead of a prepaid SIM, but me using a contract is definitely not keeping the country's innovation (or now even pricing) at the bottom of the world rankings in terms of mobile costs/innovation.
