Article Sidebar
Published:
Oct 22, 2021Keywords:
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright in all material published in PER/PELJ vests in the author, provided that authors grant, by submission of their contributions, permission that their contributions may be shared and adapted without restriction. An author furthermore agrees that the same contribution may not be published elsewhere without the written permission of the editor.
Anyone gaining access, electronically or otherwise, to a contribution to PER, may quote from such contribution, use the intellectual content thereof, share and adapt it, but subject to the following conditions:
you must give appropriate credit, provide a link and indicate if changes were made; and
the copyright of the author(s) may not be infringed in any way.
Main Article Content
The Life and Times of Textualism in South Africa
Abstract
This paper analyses the dominant approaches to statutory interpretation through a historical lens. It argues that for most of South Africa's history the methods of interpretation were twisted in order to give effect to the intentions of the legislature. This approach to interpretation has now been discarded into the waste bin of history, and intentionalism has been replaced with contextualism. Or so we are told. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Natal Joint Municipal Pension Fund v Endumeni Municipality 2012 4 SA 593 (SCA) has been hailed as the new, settled approach to interpretation, with the Constitutional Court endorsing Endumeni on numerous occasions. But it appears from both the judgments of the Constitutional Court and those of other Courts that intentionalism is not yet dead. This paper argues that the reason for this is because Endumeni has not provided clarity to the process of interpretation that it proclaims to do.
