South African Law

South African law is a mixed or hybrid legal system built from three inherited traditions: Roman-Dutch civil law from Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope beginning in 1652, English common law from the British takeover of the Cape in 1806, and the customary law of indigenous African communities. The two colonial layers divide unevenly by subject: English law dominates criminal procedure, civil procedure, company law, constitutional law and the law of evidence, while Roman-Dutch law dominates the law of contract, the law of delict (the Roman-Dutch equivalent of tort), family law and property. The Union of South Africa formed as a British dominion in 1910; the post-apartheid Constitution of 1996 established constitutional supremacy over all three inherited traditions, with a Constitutional Court at the top of a hierarchical court structure, and gave customary law formal constitutional recognition alongside the common law.