10 Judgment No. SC 52/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 560/17 of a merger in the Act is inclusive of mergers other than horizontal and vertical mergers cannot be faulted. For clarity, however, the South African Competition Act of 1998 has since been amended by Act No. 39 of 2000 to specifically include all mergers, but it is clear from the above authorities that even before that amendment the words “or other person” in the former definition of “merger” were held to include conglomerate mergers. Commenting on the interpretation of the words “or other person”, Ignatious Nzero, in an article titled “Is there a gap in the definition of corporate mergers in Zimbabwe’s Competition Act? Revisiting the Caledonia Holdings (Africa) Limited/Blanket Mine (1983) (Private) Limited Merger” 2015 78.4 THRHR 589 at p 600, stated that: “The phrase ‘or other person’ can be construed as a catch all phrase that is meant to capture all other forms of mergers outside those specified as between competitors, suppliers and customers. If the legislature really intended to maintain a same line of persons, it is submitted that it would have used the word ‘and’, not ‘or’. ‘And’ means in addition to the list provided, suggesting in addition to competitor, supplier and customer whereas ‘or’ suggests a diversion from the list. Thus, the use of ‘or’ entails that the legislature intended to expand the list to include even those persons outside the specified list. There is nothing in the statute or anywhere else to suggest that such a construction is wrong…”. The words “or other person” in this context cannot be interpreted eiusdem generis as advocated by the appellants. The eiusdem generis rule was defined by the learned author GailMaryse Cockram, The Interpretation of Statutes 3 ed p 153, as follows: “Where a list of items which form a genus or class is followed by a general expression, the general expression is, in the absence of a contrary intention in the statute, construed eiusdem generis to include only other things of the same class as the particular words.”