Margaret Hewett

Margaret Hewett (née Hunter, 1934, Johannesburg - 18 February 2022, Cape Town) was a South African authority on the ‘Old Authorities’ of Roman-Dutch law.

Hewett studied at the university in Cape Town, receiving a BA in History and Classics in 1954, a BA (Hons.) in History in 1955, and a BEd in 1956. She began her career as a teacher, first in South Africa, before moving to England where she taught Latin at Fritham House, a private school in the New Forest. She returned to South Africa in 1963 and married Jeremy Hewett that year.

From 1980 she was affiliated with the Classics department at the University of Cape Town, and was appointed an associate professor. On her retirement in 2000 she was appointed an Honorary Research Associate in that university's Department of Private Law.

On retirement she completed a doctoral thesis on Ulrik Huber with the University of Amsterdam. Her expertise on the ‘Old Authorities’ was built through translation work she embarked on at the request of the South African Law Commission, first in 1966. As Andrew Domanski stated in a review of her work in 2005: “Her translations have often been relied upon in the judgments of our courts.” Provided by Wikipedia