Sam Basch, 12 April 2025

In this presentation, Sam Basch uses his own experience to show that a researcher can indeed retrace the family's footsteps.

By putting pen to paper as soon as possible (so to speak), many doors open and your publication helps other researchers with new information about the family.

Karen Harris, 08 March 2025

Karen Harris’s research focuses primarily on the Chinese in the southern African region throughout the colonial period, apartheid to the new democratic dispensation and was used in court cases regarding BEE and hate speech and the SA Chinese community.

The talk considers the Labour Importation Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act promulgated in the Transvaal Colony and the Cape Colony in 1904 as veritable sources for genealogical research. It traces the early history of the Chinese in the global South that culminated in the introduction of ordinances, regulations as well as legislation to prescribe and prohibit their movement and occupation.

It distils a few cases from these records to reveal the glimpses of genealogy they contain and how these can contribute to an understanding of Afrikaner ancestry and identity in the context of a genetic admixture.

Hoffie Hofmeyr, 08 February 2025

Hoffie HOFMEYR worked in Europe for 15 years after school.

In Denmark he found that the governor of the Reserve Bank was Hoffmeyer. He could see that there were different spellings in different parts of the world and searched through the telephone registers of 70 countries. The origin and correct spelling were challenges.

After retirement in 1995, he and his late brother began to collect sources and information. There were books, letters, correspondence, meeting minutes and then many conversations with family.

Hoffie tells more about the HOFMEYR Family in South Africa and also elaborates on his own grandfather, whom he did not know, and his own parents' family history.