The authors emphasize the commonality of the underlying principles, eg the principle of accessoriness, governing all categories of security rights.

The vesting of a real security right does not change the balance of the assets in the debtor’s estate – it merely ring-fences the recoverable value of the identified objects of security in favour of the preferred and secured creditors. With personal security rights, the recovery is extended to include all the assets of someone other than the primary debtor – the surety.

International reviewers’ comments on the Afrikaans edition confirm the value of this approach and add:

“The research invested in and included in the book is impressive on several levels. The book remarkably combines a dogmatic scientific approach with usefulness of legal practice. With regard to legal practice, I have admired the in-depth manner in which the authors scrutinize the South African case law in all its dimensions and recent developments. Their analysis is developed in the text or, very often also, in the footnotes which contain a treasure of developments. On a scientific level, both the historical and comparative developments … contributes to the existing academic work” Prof Dr Vincent Sagaert – KU Leuven

“The book has three main advantages. First it gives an excellent overview of the law on securities in general and the one on South African law in particular. Second, what makes the book a pleasure to read is its emphasis on case­law. Third, the focus on comparative law makes the book highly interesting to lawyers with a foreign law outlook. The book is also very much up to date” – Prof Dr Ewoud Hondius, University of Utrecht.