Not persecuting your population of skilled workers would have also been a good strategy for South Africa.

This might be politically difficult when the skilled workers (or their ancestors) were persecuting the population of unskilled workers for generations.

Not only that, but the said-ancestors established a separate, impoverished, lower-quality education system to ensure that they'd be perpetually unskilled and incapable of competing for skilled jobs even if they wanted to talented. Diabolical.

Honest question: how did that education system compare to the one that previously existed for said population?

There is much more funding being provided now, but it's far from enough sadly. In terms of policy, its much more egalitarian on paper in the sense that every student is supposed to study the same material, unfortunately there are still under-resourced schools and egregious negligence and/or corruption. I'd say the black, middle-class-and-higher (or very gifted but poor) students have benefitted the most by getting the institutional roadblocks removed since they already have access to good schools. The the system has improved marginally for the poor, and those who are in remote rural areas (the two are often synonymous)

I would speculate that, on the whole, they’re probably comparable in terms of outcome, the old system was designed for mediocre outcomes whereas the current one is due to negligence. But could be wrong, our former white public schools now serve everyone and presumably are better than the Bantu education schools that black people were previously limited to. These schools are of course the minority.

Yes I don’t think anyone here disputes the historical cause.