Naturally, the Bureau itself has a coat of arms which were adopted in 1965. The blazon is "Azure, three escutcheons Or, on a chief of the second the South African lion". In layman's language this means that the shield is blue, it displays three smaller golden shields, and across the top is a gold horizontal strip displaying the red lion that formed the crest of the old South African national coat of arms. The Bureau arms are depicted on the seal on each registration certificate and, in the 1960s and early 1970s, they were depicted in full colour at the head of the certificate too.