Marriage certificates are available either through the original church records which are are at the church verger’s office or the appropriate church archives such as the Cory Library in Grahams Town for Methodist Church Records,  the William Cullen Library at Wit’s University for Anglican Church Archives.  The majority of marriage certificates are available through the  Department of Home Affairs and earlier ones at the National Archives.

When searching manually at the archives for marriage certificates you will need to know the exact magisterial district in which the marriage took place, you can go to the archives in that area and search the inventories for the Home Affairs Office – there is a qualification of access of 20 years. However, most of these records date from before 1970.

There is no searchable online index for any of these records, however Ancestry24 does have thousands of transcribed records online for many churches in South Africa.