Eastern Frontier, Cape of Good Hope, ca 1835

Kaffraria was the descriptive name given to the southeast part of what is today the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

of South Africa. Kaffraria, i.e. the land of the Kaffirs, is no longer an official designation (with the term ''kaffir'' now an offensive racial slur in South Africa). The districts now known as King Williams Town and

East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...

were annexed by the British early on, and were thus known as

British Kaffraria British Kaffraria was a British colony/subordinate administrative entity in present-day South Africa, consisting of the districts now known as Qonce and East London. It was also called Queen Adelaide's Province. The British Kaffraria was establish ...

(later annexed to Cape Colony in 1865). All of the remaining Xhosa territory beyond the

Kei River The Great Kei River is a river in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is formed by the confluence of the Black Kei River and White Kei River, northeast of Cathcart. It flows for and ends in the Great Kei Estuary at the Indian Ocean wi ...

, south of the Drakensberg Mountains and as far as the Natal frontier, remained independent for longer and was 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 Thembuland, af, Temboeland, is a natural region in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Its territory is the traditional region of the abaThembu, one of the states of the Xhosa nation. It was formerly also known as "Tamboekieland" or " ...

and Griqualand East, incorporated into Cape Colony at various periods between 1879 and 1894. They had a total area of 18,310 km²., 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.

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Thunder from a Clear Sky
Former subdivisions of South Africa {{EasternCape-geo-stub

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