Interpretation of Statutes

Assignment One

Unique Number: 848933

Question 1

The enactment of both the interim and the final Constitution ushered in a new approach to the statutory interpretation. In this essay I argue that the statement made by the court in Daniels v Campbell 2003 (9) BCLR 969 (C) at 985 is false as the courts of the time failed to acknowledge that South Africa was and is a diverse society in which there exists a lot of diverse cultures which in turn have their own customary law

According to Botha, interpretation of statute is the body of rules and principles used to construct the correct meaning of legislative provisions to be applied in practical situations. Du Plessis further explains that statutory interpretation is about construing enacted law texts with reference and reliance on other law texts and in the case of Daniels v Campbell they did not consider the existence of Muslim customary law. Du Plessis also explains interpretation of statutes as the concretising of text to be construed so as to cater for the existence of an actual or hypothesised concrete situation, explained lightly, it is about making sense of the total relevant legislative scheme applicable to the situations at hand.

In the case of Daniels v Campbell, The High Court reluctantly came to the conclusion that he applicant was not a spouse or survivor for the purpose of the Act as her marriage to the deceased was not recognised as a valid marriage in terms of South African law and the Marriage Act, an act of the Parliament of South Africa governing the solemnisation and registration of marriages in South Africa. Muslim marriages were regarded as potentially polygynous resulted in such marriages historically not being recognised by South African law. A valid civil marriage in South Africa had to be monogamous. This was quite clear from the context of common law, statutes, case law that is the Daniels v Campbell which show a clear bias towards western and Christian moral values despite South Africa...