Welcome to the 1972 Voters Roll Project - Rhino
Written by Germaine Smith.
The Rhino project has entered a new phase! Phase 1 was to photograph all the pages of the 1972 Voters Roll. Thanks to branches supporting the project and a sponsorship of US$4500, that is now done! All 105 000 photographs have been taken.
We are now moving on to phase 2, where the PDF's will be converted to OCR to make is searchable. This will take some time as the project has to be outsourced and we have to generate the necessary funds. At this stage GSSA can offer you selective surnames in PDF format.
There are currently two options available to obtain information, in PDF format, from the 1972 Voters Roll:
OPTION 1: Individual surnames available in PDF format
Administration fee: R50 per surname; this includes the first 10 pages. Thereafter, R1 per page if your chosen surname includes more than 10 pages. The images will be sent to you via Dropbox.
OPTION 2: Sponsor a whole book
We have created an index of the 300 books as well as the order form that can be downloaded here as 1972 Voters Roll Index and Order Form. The sponsor will select the book with his/her choice of surnames from the index, pay R350 to GSSA Northern Transvaal Branch and then send proof of payment to Annemarie Dreyer. Her details as well as the banking details are listed on the Index & Order form. The books will be sent by Annemarie in zipped PDF format via Dropbox.
Orders can be placed with Annemarie Dreyer via e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Please note that the below option of ordering an entire book is also still available
You will all remember GSSA's Elephant Project "The transcription of the 1984 Voters Roll" and the years of toil by many volunteers to transcribe more than 3 million names to make the information available to data-hungry genealogists ! Why the Elephant Project ? because you eat an elephant on bite at a time !
GSSA has now moved on to the next project and we decided to name it after another animal not quite as large but even tougher - the Rhino Project our attempt at Saving our Rhino's the 1972 Voters Roll.
The Northern Transvaal branch of GSSA under the able leadership of Annemarie Dreyer will manage the project on behalf of GSSA and has aleady started the process of photographing the 300 A3 computer-printed books each with about 350 pages and 7000 names.
In order to finance the project NEC of GSSA provided seed-funding of R 10,000 but that falls far short of the cost. Our plan is to find sponsors for each book at R 350 per book in turn the sponsor will receive the 350 photographs in PDF format of the entire book that he/she selected.
We have created an index of the 300 books as well as the order form that can be downloaded here 1972 Voters Roll Index and Order Form .
The sponsor will select the book from the index with his/her choice of surnames pay R 350 to GSSA Northern Transvaal and then send proof of payment to Annemarie Dreyer her details as well as the banking details are listed on the Index & Order form.
The books will be photographed on a first paid first serve basis and sent by Annemarie in Zipped PDF format via Dropbox.
After the photographing of the complete set of books and the OCR of each page, the final product will be placed on the GSSA Webshop together with the 1984 Voters Roll, the eSAGI database and the Cemetery Transcription data. The sponsor will receive a WORD/EXCEL file of the section he/she sponsored as soon as the OCR process is completed.
Please support the project to ensure that the data of the 1972 Voters Roll is accessible for future generations of genealogists
For more information please contact: Annemarie Dreyer via email
