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President - Hendrik Louw 2022

I was born on 9 September 1959 in Kenhardt as the second child (four sons) of Willem Jacobus Nicolaas Louw and Elizabeth Maria de Waal.

My childhood days on the farm Loogkolk where I grew up were carefree. We had to help from an early age, but also had the wide open landscape to play. In my pre-school years, Bushmanland experienced serious drought. Like many farmers, my parents temporarily went to seek grazing in South West Africa; my mother's parents hailed from Suidwes (Southwest).

I started Sub A in Kenhardt, but in Sub B we had a dry year again and it was back Southwest. In 1968 I returned to the Bushmanland and completed my school career in Kakamas at Martin Oosthuizen High School.

After school I went to Bloemfontein where I obtained a B.Com degree from the University of the Orange Free State (UOFS). In 1986, I married Sharon Gail Lockhart. We have three children, Chantel, Jaco and Sindy.

After 39 years in banking, I started my own real estate firm (HESHA Properties) HE = Hendrik + SHA = Shar in Kempton Park where we still live.

The Genealogy bug bit me when I had to write down the names of Oupa Izaak Jacobus Louw’s siblings around 1970. Although he could remember sixteen (he died at the age of 103 in 1990), research shows that there were at least 22 children. In 2009 I served for the first time as president of the Genealogical Society of South Africa (GSSA). I still handle GSSA's product portfolio.