Registrar of Deeds, Cape Town

• DOC

The registration of land at the Cape originated in 1657 when grants of land were given to the first colonists along the Liesbeek River at Rondebosch. In 1686 it was found that many colonists possessed erven in property or on loan and could not produce sufficient certificates of their rights. On 1 July 1686 the Council of Policy resolved that deeds and leases were to be registered with the Secretary of the Council.

From the earliest years transfers and mortgages of immovable property took place before two Commissioners of the Council of Policy and the Secretary to the Council. Between the years 1716 and 1718, the Commissioners of the Council of Policy were replaced by Commissioners of the Court of Justice.

During the years 1806 – 1827 the registration of deeds was attached to the office of the Colonial Secretary. By Ordinance 39 of 1828 the method of certifying, enregistering and subscribing deeds before two members of the Court of Justice in the presence of the Colonial Secretary was abolished. All transfers, bonds and deeds were now required to be registered before an official designated Registrar of Deeds.

Lieutenant-Colonel GJ Rogers, who held the position of Registrar of Slaves and later Protector of Slaves, was appointed the first Registrar of Deeds. The duties of these three distinct offices eventually became too heavy for one official to bear and subsequently the deeds registry was transferred in 1837 to the Treasurer, WH Harvey.

By 1839 the business of the Deeds Registry Office had increased to such an extent that the Governor, Sir George Napier, recommended to the Secretary of State on 29 March 1839 that a separate Deeds Registry Office be created and that JG Brink be placed in charge of the office. The measures for implementing the institution of a separate Deeds Registry Office were sanctioned by the Secretary of State on 29 October 1839.

In terms of Ordinance 14 of 1844 the practice of drawing or preparing deeds exclusively in the Deeds Registry Office was discontinued. Deeds could now be prepared either by qualified conveyancers or in the Deeds Registry Office.

The functions of the various registrars of deeds in the four provinces of South Africa were set out in section 3 of Act 47 of 1937.

The Archives:

In terms of the aforementioned Act, deeds registry offices fall into the category of offices of record. One of the functions of a registrar of deeds, as stipulated by said Act, is to take charge of and preserve all records created in the particular registry office of which he is head. The Archives Act No 6 of 1962, as amended, especially provides that archives which according to any other law are required to be kept in the custody of a particular person, need not be transferred to a public archives repository. The archives described in the accompanying inventory are, consequently, not a complete reflection of the archives of the Registrar of Deeds, Cape Town. It would appear that archives having no further immediate use for, or which are duplicated in the Deeds Registry Office, Cape Town, were transferred to the Cape Archives Depot (now the Cape Town Archives Repository).

The archives created by the Secretary of the Council of Policy and by the Colonial Secretary pertaining to the registration of deeds, prior to the establishment of the office of the Registrar of Deeds, Cape Town in 1828, have been included with the latter official’s archives because of practical reasons.

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