11 (b) If so, how does it provide the accommodation? (c) Does the evidence bring the plaintiff within the scope of the protection? The appropriate legislation [16] The case was argued in the court a quo on the assumption that the 1969 Act, which came into operation on 1 December 1970, was of application to the plaintiff’s claim. Section 16(2)(a)of that Act provides that ‘the provisions of any law which immediately before the commencement of this Act applied to the prescription of a debt which arose before such commencement . . . shall continue to apply to the prescription of the debt in question in all respects as if this Act had not come into operation’. The court a quo held that the debts that are now in issue arose before that date and accordingly the 1943 Act determines whether they have prescribed. That finding is clearly correct. The question before us is whether prescription began to run as provided for in s 5(1)(c) of the 1943 Act in respect of those debts more than three years before the action was instituted. The interpretation of s 5(1)(c) of Act 18 of 1943 [17] The section provides that: ‘(1) Extinctive prescription shall begin to run – . . . (c) in respect of an action for damages, other than for defamation, from the date when the wrong upon which the claim for damages is based was first brought to the knowledge of the creditor, or from the date on which the creditor might reasonably have been expected to have knowledge of such wrong, whichever is the earlier date;’. [18] I have referred in paragraph [3] to the interpretation which Nel J placed on ‘the