Wow, I've never heard of anyone in South Africa with a non-government job being asked to have their fingerprints taken. Admittedly, my background is mostly tech startups, but even friends who worked at big-ish companies (Didata, CS Holdings, &c.) have never mentioned it.

Credit history is a mostly used as a poor indication that you won't be tempted to sell company or user private information. It might also be an indicator of poor judgement or other bad traits, I guess. I think only one company ever asked this of me, and they were certainly the most backward of those I interviewed at.

Basically, companies are trying to avoid hiring bad people. Whether it's because they've bought into the "it is impossible to fire anyone" story or not, it is costly in terms of time and wasted effort and disruption. And, generalising from an admittedly small sample size, I'd say they're not as good or as introspective about how they hire as the few (admittedly really good) US companies I'm familiar with.