Judgment No. SC 47/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 695/15 of evidence which seems to have been settled in Waterhouse v Shields 1924 CPD 115, wherein GARDINER J made the following remarks: “As far as I have been able to ascertain there is no such general provision in our statutes with regard to civil cases, but seeing that in criminal cases and in many instances in civil cases, the law of England in regard to evidence, where there is nothing to the contrary in our law, is to be followed, it seems to me as a general rule we should follow the law of evidence in England. Our system of procedure and our practice is based in the main upon the English system and not upon the system which used to prevail in the Courts of Holland. Now, in England if a witness is subpoenaed, duces tecum, and is simply called to produce, without giving evidence or identifying the documents he need not be sworn.” This position of the principle underlying the subpoena duces tecum was confirmed in Bladen and Another v Weston and Another 1967(4) SA 4129,at 431D-E, where CORBETT J, (as he then was) had occasion to remark: “It would appear from authorities quoted by counsel for the applicants that the procedure whereby a witness, who is subpoenaed duces tecum to produce documents, is not initially required to go into the witness-box and take an oath prior to producing those documents to the Court, is basically one of convenience. It is also probably dictated partially by the undesirability of such a witness being exposed to a lengthy cross-examination on the case generally.” In my view, these authorities fortify the position taken by the appellants that a subpoena duces tecum could not demand the production of documents as well as compelling the attendance of a witness to give oral testimony on the documents being sought to be produced. In their book Principles of Evidence 3ed, the learned authors Schwikkard and Van Der Merwe at p 363 state that a person who attends court in obedience to a subpoena duces tecum is not necessarily a witness and consequently need not take an oath unless he is required to prove the document, that is where he is required to go onto the witness stand and hand in a document.