Girmit.

Come back anytime

Close this tab and return whenever you're ready — today, next week, next month. As long as it's the same browser on the same device, and you haven't cleared its data, everything you entered will still be here.

Save a copy to your own device

Export downloads a plain file, saved to your own device, that you fully own. Use it to keep a personal backup, move your work to a different phone or computer, or hand your research to a family member. Import brings a file like that back in — if you already have people entered, you'll be asked to merge (recommended: a shared ancestor is matched and linked rather than duplicated, so everyone's separate research grows into one tree) or to replace everything instead.

Matching for a merge is done by colonial number where one is recorded, or otherwise by name, father’s name and birth date — it is not perfect, so check the People tab afterwards for anyone who should have merged but didn’t (or vice versa) and fix it by hand.

Once you hand an exported file to anyone — a family member or otherwise — what they do with it is outside Girmit’s and Kirosconsult’s control. Only share your family’s information with people you trust with it; a copy that has left this browser cannot be recalled or deleted by us.

Storage

Privacy & data retention

Without an account, Kirosconsult does not receive, store or have access to the family information you enter into Girmit. Every name, date, place, colonial number, note and photograph is written only to your own browser’s local storage, on your own device, and nothing is sent anywhere as you use the tool.

With an account, the same tree is also saved on this website, in your account, each time you change it. It is kept so that you can open your tree on another device, and for nothing else. It is not shown to other members. To let you sign in we also keep your name, your email address and your password, which is stored scrambled and cannot be read by anyone.

Documents you upload — scans and photos of certificates, IDs and family papers — are kept in your account only, so that you can see them beside your tree and use them for your application. Your saved tree and your documents are stored encrypted: a copy of the database or of the files on its own cannot be read. They are opened only when you view them while signed in. You can delete any document yourself, at any time, from Evidence → Your documents. The site’s administrator runs the server they are kept on, and does not look at members’ trees or documents.

Anyone can make a free account on this site, and delete it themselves. Kirosconsult operates this website and its accounts, and provides the page itself. We do not sell, share or analyse what you enter.

Some of what this tool captures — religion, caste (including caste inferred from surname spelling), and family relationships — is treated as special/sensitive personal information under South Africa’s POPIA. Without an account, none of it passes through or is stored on our systems. With an account, we hold your tree and your documents on your behalf, encrypted, only to keep them available to you, behind the site’s sign-in, and you can have them deleted at any time.

The Erase all data on this device button above permanently deletes everything stored in that browser. It does not delete the copy in your account. To delete your account and everything saved in it — your tree, your documents and any branches you shared — use Delete my account at girmit.co.za/join/. It happens straight away. Without an account, erasing this browser is the only way to delete your data, and we cannot recover it for you afterwards.

Information Officer: Nieshlin Naidoo, reachable at info@kirosconsult.co.za for any question about how this tool handles personal information.

If what this tool keeps, or where, changes again, this statement will be updated before the change takes effect. Last updated 24 September 2026, when accounts and document uploads were added to this site.

Before anything else: where your data lives

Without an account, everything you enter stays in this browser, on this device. It is never uploaded, and nobody — including us — can see it. If you have an account on this site, your tree is also saved to it as you type, so you can open it on another phone or computer, and documents you upload are kept in your account, encrypted. Without one, that has two consequences worth understanding up front:

• Clearing your browser data, or using a different device or browser, means starting empty. Your work does not follow you automatically.
• There is no “forgot my data” recovery. Use Backup → Export to file regularly — that downloaded file is your only backup.

Always open Girmit at the same address (www.girmit.co.za). A different address counts as a different browser store.

Start with the papers you already have

Before typing anything, gather what the family holds: your own birth certificate or ID; birth, marriage and death certificates for your parents and grandparents; anything with a colonial (ship) number on it, such as an old birth register copy, a pass or indenture papers; and old letters or photographs with names or dates on them.

If you have an account, upload them under Evidence → Your documents. A clear photo from your phone is fine. Then say whose each one is and what it is, and use them to fill in the people below. Each upload can be up to 15 MB, and they are kept in your account, encrypted, where only you can open them.

Let Girmit trace the numbers

Old birth, marriage and death registers carry official numbers such as 56346/20889/5265/5514. Each part is an ancestor’s ship number, and long numbers can be read more than one way. Press Trace a certificate (on People, or Trace its numbers beside a document), say whose numbers they are, and copy each line exactly as written: on registers the father’s number is the top line and the mother’s is underneath.

Girmit looks every ship number up in the ship’s lists, keeps only the reading where every father is a man, every mother a woman and the dates fit, and shows you the family it found. Nothing is added until you press Add to my tree.

Step 1 — Add yourself

On the People tab, click Add a person and enter yourself. Two shortcuts:

• SA ID number — typing a full 13-digit green-book number fills in your date of birth and sex automatically. It only ever fills fields that are still empty; it never overwrites something you typed.
• Born in — set this to South Africa for yourself and recent generations. It is what makes the Origin column read Colonial-born rather than Unknown.

Step 2 — Understand the colonial number

This is the single most important idea in the tool. The number written on a colonial birth register is not just a label — it is a pointer to the previous generation.

• A single number (e.g. 70523) means that person was born in India. It is their own ship number, and it can be looked up directly.
• A compound number (e.g. 56589/24637/24636) means that person was born in the colony. The parts are their parents’ numbers — so the number itself tells you who to look for next.

Paste the number exactly as written on the register. Use Tools → Decode a colonial number to see what any number implies before you act on it.

Step 3 — Let Girmit fetch the details

When a person has a single colonial number, click Look up next to that field. Girmit fetches that passenger’s record from SA Indian Routes and shows you exactly what it found — name, father’s name, ship, arrival date, village, district, caste, employer.

Nothing is filled in until you agree. Review the list, then choose Fill these fields or Discard. Anything you have already typed is left alone, and every field stays fully editable afterwards, so you can correct a misreading at any time.

Only the public ship number is sent when you do this — never your own family information.

Step 4 — Build the tree backwards

In People, switch to Tree: every person shows dashed + Add father / + Add mother slots above them. Clicking one opens a form already aimed at that slot, and Girmit tries to help in two ways:

• If that ancestor is already in your list — from an import, say — they are offered under Already in your list?, and pre-selected when their colonial number matches what the child’s own number implies. Link them rather than typing them again, so you never end up with the same ancestor twice.
• If the child’s number implies a single ship number for that slot, it is pre-filled for you — just press Look up.

The small + on any card adds a sibling, or a second father/mother (step, adoptive, guardian). Second parents are recorded but deliberately excluded from the eligibility chain, which follows blood descent only.

Step 5 — Check eligibility

Your line walks from the person you have set as yourself back to the earliest India-born ancestor it can reach, and counts the generations. There are two entirely separate routes to OCI, and the tab shows both where they apply:

• By blood descent — South Africans are now eligible to the 7th generation (from 1 December 2025).
• By marriage — the foreign-origin spouse of an Indian citizen or OCI holder qualifies once the marriage is registered and has lasted two years. This does not depend on your own ancestry at all. Fill in the Marriage section of a person’s form to use it.

Evidence then lists what is still missing, and Dossier assembles it into a printable summary for the application.

Saving a copy of your tree

In People, switch to Tree: Save tree as PDF opens your browser’s print dialog — choose Save as PDF as the destination (or Microsoft Print to PDF on Windows). The whole chart is printed at full size regardless of how you have zoomed or panned it on screen, headed with whose ancestors it shows and the date.

For the written application summary rather than the chart, use Dossier → Print / save as PDF instead.

Sharing with family — “many roots, one tree”

Different relatives can each research a different branch and then combine, without a server or accounts. The person who has done the work uses Data → Export to file and sends the file on. The relative receiving it uses Data → Import from file.

If they already have people entered, they are asked to merge. Merging matches shared ancestors — by colonial number first, otherwise by name, father’s name and birth date — and links them rather than duplicating them. Only genuinely new people are added.

If a cousin wants to work from your tree but make themselves the starting point: after importing, the Tree view asks “Who are you in it?”. They pick themselves from the list, or add themselves if they are not in it yet. Everyone already there stays exactly as they are — the shared half of the tree is kept — but eligibility is now worked out for them, and the tree opens on their line. They can then extend the branches that are theirs and not yours, such as a mother’s side, using the empty parent slots.

Once a file leaves your browser, what the recipient does with it is outside our control. Share only with people you trust with your family’s information.

When the trail goes cold

If a person has no colonial number and no known parents, Girmit cannot search for them. That is a limit of the records, not the tool: the registers carry no surnames — the second column is the father’s given name — and clerks spelled the same name many different ways, so searching by name alone is unreliable and can attach the wrong ancestor to your line.

At that point the next step is a person, not a search: the 1860 Heritage Centre, Derby Street, Durban — 031 309 1858. Wednesdays are their tracing day. The KZN Archives Repository in Pietermaritzburg holds the original birth registers.

Habits worth keeping

• Export a backup after every real session. It is the only copy that survives a cleared browser.
• Verify what you fetch. The lookup always shows its source link — check a surprising result against the register image before trusting it.
• Record the number exactly as written, even where it looks wrong. A transcription you have quietly “fixed” is hard to check later.
• Attach documents as you go — the Dossier is only as good as the evidence behind it.