Roman Dutch Law

I swear half the time here people think I'm stupid. Ok, some of the things I do are stupid like the other day when I didn't know I had to push the AC button to get the air conditioning to work in my car. I assumed I just wasn't driving the car fast enough. My husband just shook his head when I told him I thought it was broken. But the other things that make me look stupid are because I come from the opposite side of the world.

My new auditor told me that all the tax and incorporation laws in South African are based on Roman Dutch law, leftover from Apartheid. More incredibly complicated things for me to learn. So I began wondering, what exactly is Roman Dutch law and is it the law that originally influenced British law like we inherited in Canada? Not likely because the British and the Dutch weren't the greatest of friends here, subtle resentments still lingering here in the Republic.