2010 volume 22, issue 1 p 154

• Date: 25 May 2019
• Published date: 25 May 2019

IN MEMORIAM:

PROF PIERRE ELDRID JOSEPH BROOKS

(11April 1934 – 29 April 2010)

Professor Pierre Brooks, a well-known and well-loved f‌igure in the world

of mercantile law, passed away on Thursday, 29 April 2010.

Pierre was born in 1934. After matriculating at the Middelburg High

School, he qualif‌ied as a civil engineering draughtsman and while thus

employed enrolled at the University of South Africa and started the long grind

towards the BA and LLB degrees. In 1969, when almost there, he was

appointed, at his own request, as a temporary junior lecturer in the

Department of Mercantile Law at Unisa. It is not everybody who, as a

husband with children, would give up a safe job to start at the bottom of an

uncertain academic career. But then Pierre Brooks was never afraid of a new

challenge. He was appointed as a lecturer in 1970 and promoted to a senior

lectureship the year after. In 1973 he accepted a new challenge when he was

appointed as deputy director at the Unisa Institute of Foreign and

Comparative Law. In consequence, his initial interest in company law took a

more outward-looking turn as appears from the title of the LLM dissertation

he submitted at the University of Exeter in 1975: The Application of Article 85

of the Treaty of Rome in Contractual Actions before English Courts and later

his 1986 PhD at the same University: The EEC and a Southern African

Common Market in Legal Perspective. In the same vein, he also lectured

part-time at the Rand Afrikaans University on private international law. In the

meantime, in 1976, he became director of the Institute and was granted a

professorship. In 1981 he returned to his f‌irst love, the Department of

Mercantile Law, where he soon made his mark: in 1982 he was appointed

head of the Department and in 1984 he was appointed as vice-dean of the

Faculty of Law.

In 1988 Pierre took on a third new challenge when he succeeded his

erstwhile departmental head, Prof Stef Naude, as chairman of the Competition

Board. Typically, he did not wish to break his ties with the academic world

and asked to be seconded to that function, which he fulf‌illed in the same

diligent, hard-working and conscientious manner until his retirement.

In private life, Brooks was equally versatile: a proud husband, father and

grandfather, a devout churchman who occasionally assisted as organist, and a

lover of sport and of music. He was inordinately proud of his Scottish

parentage, enjoying Scottish dancing in his younger years and even playing

the bagpipes – now there is a challenge for you!

At his funeral, the eulogies all referred to his outstanding characteristics as

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(2010) 22 SA Merc LJ 154

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