Tell me where there better qualified people in 1940s to do the job than the white Afrikaner population? Possibly some English people, they were also employed, if I have my facts right the first Afrikaans mining manager were employed in 1990s about.
If people we employed based on merit and not on the bases of being white, I believe most whites would have been appointed in those positions anyway. Currently we have people with more merit available, being pushed aside for people with more pigment. So your argument does not hold water.
About the railways, my grandfather worked on the railways his whole life, he had to inspect the trains, which entailed crouching down on his knees, which today is so worn out he cannot walk. He worked hard, if he did not his employment based on being Afrikaans would have been terminated, as being Afrikaans meant working very hard.
Furthermore, those positions you mentioned, did not require more than matric (if you can pass matric you can possibly handle the responsibility of inspecting a train) but today we see people with no education in very high ranking government posts. How is that logical?
In summary, the discrimination we see today, is worse in terms of how unfair it is.
Your argument is a non-starter, there were no "other" qualified canidates due to the employment policies of the day, and never mind the intentional sub-quality education forced upon Blacks, Coloureds and Indians. And becuase it has hardly been 17 years since the Nats started dismantling Apartheid legislature, we find ourselves in the situation we are in now, there are so "few" PDI canidates out there that they can double their salary in the space of 2 years simply by moving from one company to the next.
On a personal note, what this woman talks about happens daily, it is just that with me I INCLUDE myself in any training or whatever meetings I have been left out of but my white counterparts are included. But come performance review time we are all the same, and what I have to say about performance is that no matter what color you are if the numbers are not there at the end of the financial year, you are in k@k.