Kaffraria

Kaffraria was the descriptive name given to the southeast part of what is today the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Kaffraria, i.e. the land of the Kaffirs, is no longer an official designation ("kaffir" is now a racial slur). It used to comprise the districts now known as King Williams Town and East London, which formed British Kaffraria, annexed to Cape Colony in 1865, and the territory beyond the Kei River south of the Drakensberg Mountains as far as the Natal frontier, known as Kaffraria proper.

As a geographical term it was later used to indicate the Transkeian territories of the Cape provinces comprising the four administrative divisions of Transkei, Pondoland, Tembuland and Griqualand East, incorporated into Cape Colony at various periods between 1879 and 1894. They had a total area of 18,310 m²., and a population (1904) of 834,644, of whom 16,777 were whites. Excluding Pondoland - not counted prior to 1904 - the population had increased from 487,364 in 1891 to 631,887 in 1904.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

See also

• British Kaffraria
• Kaffrarian Rifles
• SS Kaffraria - a British cargo ship

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