Before South Africa’s provincial borders changed there were four provinces – each of the four provinces of the Republic has its own deeds registry at the respective capitals – Cape Town, Pretoria, Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein; the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Province), however, has three additional registries at King William’s Town, Kimberley and Vryburg, while the Transvaal has an additional office in Johannesburg, known as the Rand Townships Registration Office. The latter serves certain areas on the Rand, collectively described and defined in Proclamation 14 of 1923 as the Mining District of Johannesburg. Deeds in this mining district are registered both in the Pretoria and the Johannesburg registry. The decentralisation in the Cape of Good Hope is the result of historical events and not merely a matter of convenience. King William’s Town was the capital of the separate dependency of British Kaffraria (1847); Kimberley was and still is the chief centre of Griqualand West, which was annexed to the British Crown in 1871 and administered as a separate colony until incorporated in the Cape of Good Hope in 1877, the final step being taken in 1880; Vryburg was the capital of the republic of Stellaland, established in 1882 and incorporated into British Bechuanaland in 1884. The deeds registries of the three territories continue to function to this day.
The one at King William’s Town serves the divisions of King William’s Town, East London, Komga, Stutterheim and portions of Cathcart and Victoria East. The Kimberley registry, established in 1872, serves the Cape divisions of Kimberley, Barkly West, Hay, Herbert and a portion of Prieska. Vryburg serves its own division as well as the divisions of Mafeking, Gordonia, Kuruman and Taung. The first registrar of deeds at Vryburg was appointed in 1882.

The areas served by each registry in the Republic of South Africa are specially indicated in the second schedule to the Deeds Registries Act (No. 47 of 1930, as amended. The mandated territory of South West Africa has its own central registry at Windhoek.

The first grants in freehold at the Cape were signed in 1657, five years after the establishment of the settlement. Land registration was based on the system in vogue in the Netherlands, but adapted to meet the peculiar circumstances at the Cape. Registration of titles issued was made compulsory in 1686. Titles are known to have been signed by a visiting commissioner of the Dutch East India Company, by the commander or governor, or by a person authorised to sign on his behalf. Land tenure at the Cape went through various stages, but the full freehold title system is firmly entrenched by various legislative enactments, granting maximum security to owners of land as well as to bond-holders, holders of servitudes and parties holding any other interest in land. In the old days at the Cape the grantee that was entitled to deal with his landed property had to sign his transfers in the presence of the secretary of the Council of Policy and two commissioners of the Court of Justice. Under British rule, until 1828, the Colonial Secretary at the Cape and two members of the Court of Justice were appointed for the purpose.
Ordinance No. 39 of 1828 at the Cape introduced a very important and far-reaching innovation. It required deeds to be signed before a registrar of deeds, and the first person to be appointed to the position was Lieut.-Col. George Rogers, then registrar of slaves. An ordinance of 1844 permitted deeds to be drawn and prepared by advocates of the Supreme Court or by someone specially authorised to do so. Previously all deeds were prepared by the Government.

Today conveyancers are authorised by the Supreme: Court to sign, prepare and draw deeds of transfer and mortgage bonds after passing a special conveyancing examination.

The Natal Deeds Registry was established at Pietermaritzburg by Cape Ordinance No. 2 of 1846. This ordinance instructed the newly appointed registrar of deeds to register deeds ‘in like manner as at Cape Town’. But by that time a large number of farms had already been granted by the Raad van Representanten van het Volk (Assembly of Representatives of the People) between 1838 and 7842 when the Republic of Natalia was de facto in power. This body continued as a legislative assembly even after the occupation by the British in 1842 and was dissolved only in October 1845. Under Ordinance 2 of 1846 registration of farms and transfers effected in the foregoing period started de novo.

In the 1820′s farmers from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River in search of better pastures, making their own arrangements with individual Griquas or Griqua chiefs. Many returned to their farms in the Cape when the rains had fallen, but many others came to stay. They became a loosely organised community under an acknowledged head, living in peace with the Griquas and even, in many cases, paying toll in the form of stock to groups of Bushmen. From 783’7 there were various authorities to be reckoned with in the territory which today is known as the Orange Free State. There were Griqua chiefs who would pass formal title of land allotted to Whites. This simply happened by mutual written agreement, for there was no organised administration, no office and no registrar. The group of Trek Boers did not claim the right to issue titles, but among themselves grantees would sell their titles or leases without further reference to the grantor. In 1837 the Voortrekkers arrived and Andries Hendrik Potgieter bought the strip of land between the Vet and Vaal Rivers, where he established the Republic of Winburg. As in Natal in the period 1838-41, land was formally granted by the Volksraad. Petty Bantu chiefs ruled mostly in the east of the present Orange Free State, but owing to the Bantu concept of communal possession of land the practice of passing title to individual landowners was foreign to them. In 1848 the whole of the territory between the Vet and Vaal Rivers was proclaimed British territory, and individual title to land was henceforth granted by the Orange River Sovereignty. Deeds of transfer were signed before civil commissioners in the various districts and were registered in their books.

In 1854 the Republic of the Orange Free State took over from the Sovereignty and for almost two years registration continued as under the Sovereignty, transfers being signed by landdrosts in the various districts, the documents forming part of the records of the central government. The present registry for the Orange Free State was formally and firmly established by Ordinance No. 5 of 1856.

By 1860 the small republics set up by rival Voortrekker communities in the Transvaal elected to become one unified state. However, up to 1866 deeds of transfer continued to be signed by owners or their agents before the landdrost of the district in which the land concerned was situated. Registration was thus affected in the register of the landdrost. The present central registry for the Transvaal was established in Pretoria in 1866, six years after this centre was proclaimed the seat of government of the Transvaal Republic.

The duties of present-day Registrars of Deeds in the Republic of South Africa are not confined to the registration of titles to land and mortgages over land. The Registrars are now enjoined by legislation to register grants, transfers, various certificates of title to land, mortgage and notarial bonds, and various transactions affecting such bonds, servitudes, ante nuptial contracts, deeds of donation, powers of attorney, Land Bank and Government charges, usufructs, rights to minerals, leases including Land Settlement Leases, prospecting contracts and mynpachten (mining leases). (Article dated 1976)