Record Atlas
33 FamilySearch collections · 3 archives · 396 places · 1660–2021

South Africa

Where the records of South Africa are, who holds them, and what it costs to look. 21,974,571 indexed records reachable through FamilySearch alone.

Where to start in South Africa

3 of the 3 checked sources here can be opened tonight. 2are free images with no account. 1is an index with no images. On top of that, 9 worldwide services reach South Africa without a subscription.

Write to NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa for what is not online. FamilySearch has 33 collections covering it, running 1660–2021, 21,974,571 indexed records. One piece of this ground is mapped for jurisdiction, so the atlas can say whose archive held it in a given year.

396 places placed, 15 volumes walked. Open South Africa on the map, or tell us what is missing.

Whose archive this ground was

Record regions mapped in South Africa — which empire held the ground, and therefore which archive holds its paper.

The archives

  • eGGSA — Genealogical Society of South Africa free Cape Town, South Africa

    Volunteer photographs of South African gravestones and transcriptions of Dutch Reformed Church registers and newspaper notices. Free, and for the Cape before 1895 it is often the only index there is.

  • Gazettes.Africa free Cape Town, South Africa

    Digitised government gazettes for 24 African countries, free and full-text searchable. A gazette is where a state prints the things it must announce — naturalisations, estate and insolvency notices, name changes, appointments — so it names ordinary people that no register indexes. The atlas held no gazette of any country before this one.

  • NAAIRS — National Archives of South Africa index Pretoria, South Africa

    The South African archives index — estate files above all, which are the backbone of South African genealogy. An index; the file is ordered from the depot. TWO DATABASES SINCE THE 2026 MIGRATION AND ONLY ONE IS COMPLETE: NARSSA's own 'Using the Search Function' page states it is migrating more than 8.3 million entries from the old NAAIRS database to the new one, that the new 'fulltext search' WILL NOT DISPLAY ALL THE RECORDS IN THE SYSTEM, and that 'Search Old NAAIRS database' will provide a more complete search. Both are offered to the public side by side. A NIL FROM THE NEW DATABASE IS THEREFORE NOT A NIL, and any recorded NAAIRS negative should say which database answered and at what address.

And 12 worldwide providers reach South Africa too — the full list.

33 FamilySearch collections

Grouped by the ground each one covers, nationwide. A free account opens the images; some are restricted to a Family History Centre.

South Africa — nationwide 33

3 more collections, contributed

A directory David assembled, sorted by what kind of record each one is. Read this differently from the rest of the page. The descriptions are his, not an archive's catalogue, and nobody here has opened the volumes behind them. Every link was tried on 2026-09-20 and answered; the ones that did not are not listed.

Church and parish registers 1
Probate, land and notarial 2
Immigration and emigration 1
  • eGGSA Primary Record Collection & Archival Series ↗ eGGSA 1700–2026

    Principal digitized record collection and archival series hosted by eGGSA. Virtual branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa with gravestone photos, passenger logs, and Bible records.

Cemeteries and burials 1
  • eGGSA Primary Record Collection & Archival Series ↗ eGGSA 1700–2026

    Principal digitized record collection and archival series hosted by eGGSA. Virtual branch of the Genealogical Society of South Africa with gravestone photos, passenger logs, and Bible records.

396 places, 15 volumes

The 250 carrying the most collections are listed; 146 more are in South Africa and on the map. Every place lists them all.

Every country · The map