Originally Posted by Der absolute Hammer
...I have my doubts that the Canadians in particular would accept a non Canadian unless they absolutely had to do so.
You are generally correct. It is taken for granted (in the case of Canada, anyway) that the applicant will have
'the legal right to work in Canada'. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be a citizen, it just means that they need to have the same legal right to work in the country that is required of anyone else, whether they are a bank president or a housekeeper.
I can only assume that the SA government is advertising on the same understanding, that being that the applicants will have the legal right to work in South Africa. That is generally 'taken for granted' in these type of advertisements. We who work in contract aviation in lesser developed countries are used to a very rare and unusual business practice, which is that our employers go to the trouble of getting a work permit for us. That is not the case for the other 99.9% of the people in the world.
For some very highly specialized positions (rocket scientist, brain surgeon, that kind of stuff), governments might be willing to arrange a work permit themselves for the successful applicant, but I doubt that would be the case for an aviation inspector - there are probably lots of adequately qualified candidates who already have the right to work in SA. By advertising in FI, they CAA is doing their best to get the message out to all of them.
Like I said earlier, I would interpret the advertisement in an international publication as a sign of good governance.