Hi Andrew Your Grandmother was a wise person! It is always useful to be able to blame senility for ones lapses! If you were confused before, you certainly will be now! Despite supposedly having a democratic government for more than 20 years our Archives are still predominantly stored according to the old provincial groupings. Also nothing has changed as we still have to enter our race group on official government forms! Just a way that the present regime can discriminate against us English speakers, just as the last government did! Now, to confuse you even more, you say you don't remember when it became compulsory in SA to register BMDs! Not an easy answer as it varied dependent upon in which Province one resided. For example, it was obligatory to register births and deaths in: Cape Province from 1895 Natal from 1868, Transvaal from 1901, Orange Free State from 1902. As far as marriage registers at the Registrar of Births, Marriages & Deaths are concerned, the following is the situation: Cape Province from 1820 (incomplete) Cape Province from 1859 (virtually complete) Natal from 1868 (virtually complete) Transvaal from 1861 (virtually complete) Orange Free State from 1872 (virtually complete) Hope you still have some hair left! Adrian From: Andrew Rodger [mailto:rodgera@audioio.com] Sent: 19 April 2015 10:50 AM To: Milly & Adrian Rowe; Denise Igesund via Subject: Re: [SOUTH-AFRICA] Vault copies of birth and marriage certificates Oh dear! I stand corrected. If I am wrong in any aspect of what I said, I apologise profusely: but I have to say I am none the wiser after your exposition; perhaps its a case of "Ag! Die ouderdom, die ouderdom!" (which was what my sainted Afrikaans grandmother and her generation used to say if she found she had muddled something). I don't remember anything specific; I was after all nearly nine years old when she died. But my mother continued the use of the expression, and so did her innumerable cousins, and I expect my surviving brothers still do to this day. I used to do Deceased Estate work way back in the late 1950s and up to mid-1961 when I left South Africa, and I fully understand how complicated such things are even in the then four Provinces; they were even worse in Australia with eight jurisdictions, and I shudder to think what they must be like in the US . . . They are also very complicated in the British Isles, with four: England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire. I also don't remember when it became compulsory in SA to report all births, deaths and marriages (at least of white people, though in some cases of non-white also) to a central registry, though I well remember my father, a Presbyterian Minister, wrestling with the paper-work on such occasions, and finding it irksome to have to state on every such document what was the race of the person and being legally responsible for verifying it. He felt that if he got it wrong, and the State came down on him, the Church would back him up and plead that the requirement was impossible to comply with given the difficulties it entailed and the artificial definition of race in the legislation; but he was prepared to be fined (and refuse to pay) if it came to that, with a view to shaming the Government. So I'm still not clear where the boundary lies, but still maintain that there is, or should be, nothing private about a happy event such as a birth. But we live in an increasingly mad world in which nothing surprises me any more; but it was startling to find the madness extending so far back. Andrew Rodger rodgera@audioio.com On 17/04/2015, at 7:38 PM, Milly & Adrian Rowe wrote: Hi Andrew I have read with interest and amusement, your last couple of emails, and for someone who has not lived in South Africa for a long time you have summed up nicely the problems we have with State and to a great extent Municipal offices. Mainly jobs for pals once the old guard and expertise has been driven out or retired! I think however you may have become a little confused! You need to separate in your mind the official and Church records. As Denise and others have said there is a closed period of 100 years for official birth records, 20 years for marriage & death records. As Denise has said, we are lucky in KZN as "our" official Natal registers (Colonial Secretary/Dept. of Interior/Dept. of Home Affairs) up to about 1950/1989 depending on the Magisterial district are housed in the Pietermaritzburg Repository. Note however that for Marriages this only includes marriages carried out by a Magistrate NOT Church marriages. Access to the Birth Registers is restricted to over 100 years BUT if you have written permission from a descendant they will allow more recent access! I believe that we are the only Province which has these official Registers housed in their local Repository. As far as Church Registers (baptisms, marriages and burials) are concerned that is a completely different matter and access to them depends very much on the policy of the various religions and where the Registers are stored. All the best Adrian Durban

Adrian, Please tell me where I could search for a Tvl. marriage in Ventersdorp, circa 1885? For P Pretorius X JJ Niman. The only information I have is birth of a child in 1998? Lucky As far as marriage registers at the Registrar of Births, Marriages & Deaths are concerned, the following is the situation: Transvaal from 1861 (virtually complete) --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com