Gazette Search FAQ

Gazette Search is a search service for the South African Government Gazette. We index 900,000+ legal notices — deceased estates, insolvencies, sales in execution, company liquidations, name changes, and curator bonis appointments — and make them instantly searchable by ID number, name, or bulk upload. The service is used by attorneys, debt-collection firms, executors, and compliance teams across South Africa.

Yes. The Government Gazette is the official publication of the South African government and is a public-domain document. Gazette Search indexes, cleans and structures these public notices to make them instantly searchable. We do not create or alter the underlying records.

All notices are sourced from the official South African Government Gazette (national and provincial). We download, parse and normalise each gazette into a structured database covering 2014 through the present, with new gazettes added on an ongoing basis.

New gazettes are scraped, parsed and indexed on a continuous basis as the Government Printing Works publishes them — typically within days of publication.

Enter a 13-digit South African ID number into the search bar. Gazette Search queries every notice on file across all years and returns every matching record — estate, insolvency, sale-in-execution, name change — in seconds.

Yes. Switch to name mode and enter a person's name (or partial name). The system uses full-text search to match against deceased names, defendant names, trustee names and other parties.

Yes. Paid plans support bulk upload of CSV or Excel files containing ID numbers. The system processes the entire file and returns matched gazette notices for each ID, with downloadable results in CSV format.

Most South African IDs will not appear in the gazette — only people with relevant legal events (death, sequestration, name change, sale in execution) will have notices. A clean result is usually good news for the person being checked.

An estate notice is published in the Government Gazette when a deceased estate is opened. It typically lists the deceased's name and ID, the executor's name and address, and an invitation to creditors to lodge claims within a set period (usually 30 days). Gazette Search indexes every estate notice and makes them searchable by ID, name, estate number, or executor.

Insolvency (sequestration) orders are published in the Government Gazette. Search by ID number on Gazette Search to see whether a person has been sequestrated, including the case number, court division, date of order, and trustee details. This is the same primary source used by credit bureaux.

A sale in execution is a court-ordered auction of property to satisfy a judgment debt. The sheriff publishes the auction details in the Government Gazette: defendant, plaintiff, case number, property description, auction date, venue, and contact details. Gazette Search makes every sale in execution searchable.

Name changes (and assumed surnames) are published in the Government Gazette by the Department of Home Affairs. We index each notice with the current name, previous name, ID number, and supporting attorney. Searching by ID surfaces every name-change notice on file.

A curator bonis is a person appointed by the High Court to manage the financial affairs of someone who is incapable of doing so themselves (mental incapacity, missing persons, etc.). These appointments are published in the gazette. Gazette Search indexes them and matches them by surname against deceased estate searches.

There is a free tier with a daily search cap, suitable for occasional one-off lookups. Paid plans (Starter, Professional, Business, Enterprise) unlock unlimited searches, bulk upload, CSV download, watchlists, and API access. There are also pay-as-you-go credit packs for teams that don't need a subscription.

Yes — full notice details (names, dates, case numbers, executor / trustee contacts) require a free account. Public summary pages (counts of notices by type for an ID, and aggregate search counts) are available without signing in.

Yes. Subscriptions can be cancelled from the billing portal at any time. There are no long-term contracts.

Yes. For high-volume use cases (250,000+ items, custom integrations, bespoke data feeds, on-premise deployment), contact sales@gazette-search.com for custom pricing.

Attorneys (estate, insolvency, family law, debt recovery), debt-collection firms, executors, accountants, compliance teams, KYC providers, and legal researchers. Anyone who needs to verify legal events against the official Government Gazette uses Gazette Search.

Yes. Many compliance and KYC teams use Gazette Search to screen counterparties for sequestration orders, sales in execution, or company liquidations. Bulk upload makes it practical to screen large portfolios in minutes.

Yes — this is one of the most common use cases. Debt-collection firms upload their full debtor book and Gazette Search returns matched gazette notices (deceased, sequestrated, etc.) so collection teams can prioritise live accounts.

Yes. Pro and Business plans include watchlist monitoring — add IDs to a watchlist and receive email alerts whenever a new gazette notice is published matching one of those IDs.

Yes. The South African Government Gazette is a public-domain government publication. We index public notices that the government itself has published. We do not collect or publish private data.

We index the gazette as it is published. We cannot remove notices from the Government Gazette itself — that requires action by the originating party (executor, sheriff, court, etc.). If you believe a notice has been published in error, contact the originating attorney or the Government Printing Works.

Yes. Business and Enterprise plans include API access for integrating gazette lookups into your own systems. See the dashboard for API key management and rate limits.

Cite as: "Gazette Search — gazette-search.com (data sourced from the official South African Government Gazette)." If you are using the data in a legal filing, you should also cite the originating gazette notice (year, gazette number, page).