Southern CrossCivil Law and Common Law in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract This book provides a history of some of the main institutions of South African private law and in so doing explores the process through which integration of the English common law and the continental civil law came about in that jurisdiction. It provides an insight into the way the process of harmonization of private law has occurred in South Africa and may occur within the European Union. By analysing the historical evolution of the most important institutions of the law of obligations and the law of property the book demonstrates how the two legal traditions have been accommodated within one system. The starting point for each chapter is the ‘pure’ Roman-Dutch law as it was transplanted to the Cape of Good Hope in the years following 1652. The analysis focuses on how the Roman-Dutch law has been preserved, changed, modified, or replaced in the course of the 19th century when the Cape became a British colony; and on what happened after the creation of the union of South Africa in 1910. Another value of the book is that it offers chapters by South African private lawyers reflecting on the history of their subjects. It therefore constitutes the first stage in the writing of a history of substantive private law in South Africa. Private law in South Africa did not develop in a vacuum but as part of a wider political and social process.

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