At the risk of being accused of spreading hype or dissing Epiphones :?, if you've got some money to spend you can get brand new Tokais in shops in Jo'burg. These are accurate replicas of the original Les Pauls from the 50's, easily as good quality as the Gibson Les Paul Standards, and priced in between Epiphones and Gibsons (if you could still buy them new).
From Wikipedia's Gibson Les Paul page:
"Although troublesome, there were overseas copycat companies that produced very high quality Les Paul and Stratocaster imitations. In fact, during the 1970s and early 1980s, a Japanese company, Tokai, made superb replicas of the 1957–59 Les Paul designs."
They still do. But now you can get them again. I own a Gibson Les Paul, but I'm still very excited about getting one soon. If you're interested, you can private message Tokai SA on this forum. He distributes, so he knows which shops have the deals.
If you can't afford one, I'd say buy a second-hand Epiphone through www.gumtree.co.za. They often come up and tend to sell for about R5,000.
