Welcome to the
Transvaal Study Circle
Est. 1965

Welcome to the new web site of a group of philatelists who have chosen to collect, study and share new information on the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) or Transvaal.

If you have heard of the Transvaal or even of our Study Circle this web site is  here to help you satisfy your curiosity about part of the Republic of South Africa which is no longer called after either of these names.

By examining its postage stamps and postal history, which is what we essentially do, we discover how the mails criss-crossed southern Africa. Many different governments were actors in making one of the most fascinating medleys of facts about communications between people. You will discover more about a part of the great continent of Africa, which is unlike any other part of the continent.

States in Southern Africa 1900

Why not investigate further? See what we can offer and connect you with, so that you might be tempted to copy the miners of the goldfield around Johannesburg which grew from rough bush veld in 1886 to a city of nearly quarter of a million inhabitants by 1911. Dig deeper to find the truth about how postal links helped the telegraphs and railways to organise a modern economy high up and far from what had been trading posts on the coasts of the Southern Ocean.

As written letters have been overtaken by parcels in today’s pandemic times we philatelists are pointed back into what is our heritage still reachable through the surviving records preserved by the state. Many records have still to be “mined” in South Africa and the TSC invites you to explore them.