Book Review: Contract: General Principles

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Published date: 05 September 2019
• Pages: 357-359
• Citation: (2009) 20 Stell LR 357
• Date: 05 September 2019
• Author: Dale Hutchison

357

REVIEWS / RESENSIES

Contract: General Principles by S van der Merwe, L van Huyssteen,

G Lubbe & MFB Reinecke. 3 ed Juta & Co Ltd Cap e Town 2007. ISBN

978070217889 4 (English), ISBN 9780702174032 (Afrikaans). 590 pp.

Price R537.00

When the rst edition of th is book appe ared in 1993, there were alrea dy

three major textbooks d ealing with the general principles of the law of

contract: the classic Kontraktereg en Handelsreg by De Wet & Van Wyk, in

Afrika ans, and the well-established works in Engl ish by Chr istie and Ker r.

The need for yet anothe r book on contract law might not have been obvious,

and yet i n the interveni ng year s the newcomer has made its inuence felt to

such an extent that it can now probably be regarded as the leading text on the

subject in South Africa. In his foreword to the second edition (which appeared

in 2003) Peet Nienaber, then recently retired as a member of the Supreme

Court of Appeal, expressed the expectation that “more a nd more judges,

practitioners and academics will begi n to use the work as their rst source

of reference” (v). Judging by the many references to the book in the repor ted

cases, and f rom my own observations in pr actice and in the academ ic world,

this expectation would seem a lready to have been met. And that should come

as no surprise, given the stature of the authors and the real need for a book

in English exp ounding the principles of c ontract according to what might be

called the “J C de Wet model”. As one who had the good fortu ne to imbibe

those principles under the tutelage of Professor Wouter de Vos, himself a

product of Stellenbosch University and who in his printed notes for st udents

closely followed the J C model, I have always preferred the book under review

to its competitors and prescribe it for my students. As Judge Nienaber said in

his foreword, it is a thinking pe rson’s book, being c oncept- rather than case -

oriented. For th at very reason he t hought that it was “not perhaps a work for

the uninitiated and the uninformed” (v). No doubt that is true, but on the whole

the feedback t hat I have had from my better students has been very positive.

Practitioners t hat I know also seem to like the bo ok. At time s, the theoretical

discussion might ru n a bit deep for the average practitioner, let alone student,

and here a nd there the sentences become r ather long and convoluted, but the

depth of knowledge and breadth of lear ning on display is truly impressive.

This third edition is only slightly more voluminous than the second, the text

being updated to accom modate legislation, case law and legal writing, gener-

ally up to the end of March 2007. The new legislation in question is mainly the

National Credit Act 34 of 2005, the Securities Services Act 36 of 2004 and the

Electronic Commun ications and Transact ions Act 25 of 2002. The Consumer

Protection Act 68 of 2008, which will have a big impact on contract law when

it nally comes into operation, will have to be considered in t he next edition.

Of t he more impor tant recent cases, Brisle y v Drots ky 2002 4 SA 1 (SCA)

and Afrox Healthcare Bpk v Strydom 2002 6 SA 21 (SCA) receive a good

deal of attention, but unfortunately t he decision of t he Constitutional Court

2009 (2) StellLR 357

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