The Beginner’s Guide to Genealogy in South Africa is a “beginner’s guide” to researching your South African ancestors, available for download from this link for personal use only and not for commercial use.
This basic guide covers 29 pages of online and physical resources for researching your family history in South Africa, for novice genealogists and family historians.
Researching your family history in South Africa is diverse, and you need to take into consideration the size of the country and the history since 1652 – it’s impossible to compact all the various resources both on and offline in one publication. Apart from this beginner’s guide to genealogy in South Africa, you can find more information in our Frequently Asked Questions section
“When you hit a wall, you’ve got to move sideways and backwards,” advises
professional genealogist Heather MacAlister. So you might look at your great-grandmother’s
sister’s death notice to see what it says about her children, and then find evidence in their histories that confirms who your great-great-grandmother was. “It’s like putting the outline of a puzzle in place, before you can fill in the pieces,” says Heather. Like building a puzzle, genealogy is painstaking work, but oh so satisfying when it comes together!
And what if you still don’t find anything? “Go back to the grassroots level and find out as much as you can about the activities of the time. Look for school records, records of forced removals, newspaper clippings and which hospitals, clinics or churches they were likely to attend. Consider sporting activities that were practised at the time, like judo, badminton, table tennis and soccer, and look for club or competition records. Also, find out what pastimes the family was involved in, for example, scouting, Girl Guides or Sunday schools. You might be able to find them through these organisations’ records.
To contact Heather MacAlister, a professional genealogist, you can email her at Contact
