About GazetteSearch

GazetteSearch is a fast way to look up every legal notice printed in the South African Government Gazette since January 2022 — around 315,000 notices in total. Type a name, an ID number, a case reference, or a phrase, and you get the relevant notices in under a second. Every result links back to the original PDF at the correct page so you can read it for yourself.

What we cover

Every issue of the National Government Gazette since January 2022, plus the Provincial Gazettes (Gauteng, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State, Northern Cape). New issues are added within a day or two of publication.

The notice types we read in detail (and turn into structured fields like name, ID, date, case number):

• J193 — Notices to creditors of a deceased estate (most common type)
• J187 — A deceased estate's final account is open for inspection
• J28 / J29 / J29CC — Bankruptcy and first creditors' meetings
• Form 1 / 2 / 4 / 5 — Steps in a bankruptcy process (trustee appointed, creditors meet, final account, dividends paid)
• Section 34 — Business sales that need to be advertised by law
• POCA — Court orders that seize property linked to crime
• Section 38 — Replacement title deeds when the original is lost

If your workflow needs a notice type we don't currently cover, email Graham.

How search works

We search in two ways and pick the right one automatically:

• For exact terms — a name, an ID, a case number, a deed number, a VIN — we look for those exact characters in every notice.
• For longer phrases — like "deceased estate Western Cape with surviving spouse" — we use AI to find notices that match the meaning, even if those exact words don't appear.

You don't have to choose. Type what you're looking for and the site does the right thing.

Source & data

Source PDFs come from gazettes.africa, a public mirror of the South African Government Gazette archive. Every result on this site links back to the original PDF at the correct page so you can verify the published text for yourself.

Pricing

Free tier: 10 searches per IP per day. Paid tier: R299/month for unlimited searches. Paid access is invoiced manually — there's no signup form. Email graham@phasetransitions.ai and you'll get a token URL.

Who runs it

Built and maintained by Graham Rowe. For corrections, takedown requests, or anything else, see the Privacy page or email directly.