Very few people can go online and type in a family name or surname and expect to find what they are looking for or any reference to their family tree. Historically records on family histories were only recorded by nobility and families that were of any substance but luckily in South Africa especially amongst the Afrikaans community we have some of the best archival records on family history in the world. Unless their is physical evidence and documents on your family it might be more difficult than you thought but on the other hand you might find so much information that you are overwhelmed with what you have found

Did you know that the majority of all South African genealogical records are housed and are in the custody of the National Archives and the Department of Home affairs and a very small percentage of this material has been transcribed, indexed or even made electronically avaialable.

So when you start looking for things like birth, marriage and death certificates on line – there is no searchable index online in South Africa.Many people expect to find searchable service like the United Kingdom or the U.S.A but unfortunately we don't.

However Ancestry24 has taken the initiative to try and make this possible by transcribing  millions of public records and make them available on line. This mammoth project cannot be made possible without the help of you the public to help contribute birth, marriage and death certificates to our online archive and share these documents and create one large South African Database.

Where to Start

To find those records you need to start with yourself and work backwards systematically one generation at a time. You should go back to level one and download our beginners guide which will tell you were to find death notices and death certificates in the archives as well as going to our Learning Centre to find out about births and marriages.

Try joining our forum boards or join your local family history society as you might find that your family tree has already been done and it can save you a lot of time. You should also build your family tree with Ancestry24 with the little information that you have as in this way other people who are related to you will be able to find you and link up to your family.