South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
I will next say a word as to the Transkeian districts, which also have
been supposed to be outside the dominion of the British Crown and which
therefore it would seem to be just to exclude were we to effect a
Confederation of our British South African Colonies.[5] But all these
districts would certainly be included in any Confederation, with great
advantage to the British Colonies, and with greater advantages to the
Kafirs themselves who live beyond the Kei. I must again refer my readers
to the map. They will see on the South Eastern Coast of the continent a
district called Kafraria,--as distinct from British Kafraria further
west,--the independence of which is signified by its name. Here they
will find the river Kei, which till lately was supposed to be the
boundary of the British territories,--beyond which the Kafir was
supposed to live according to his own customs, and in undisturbed
possession of independent rule. But this, even before the late Kafir
outbreak, was by no means the case. A good deal of British annexation
goes on in different parts of the world of which but little mention is
made in the British Parliament, and but little notice taken even by the
British press. It will be seen that in this territory there live 501,000
natives, and it is here, no doubt, that Kafir habits are to be found in
their fullest perfection. The red Kafir is here,--the man who dyes
himself and his blanket and his wives with red clay, who eschews
breeches and Christianity, and meditates on the coming happy day in
which the pestilent interfering European may be driven at length into
the sea. It is here that Kreli till lately reigned the acknowledged king
of Kafirdom as being the chief of the Galekas. Kreli had foughten and
been conquered and been punished by the loss of much of his
territory;--but still was allowed to rule over a curtailed empire. His
population is now not above 66,000. Among even these,--among the Pondos,
who are much more numerous than the Galekas, our influence is maintained
by European magistrates, and the Kafirs, though allowed to do much
according to their pleasures, are not allowed to do everything. The
Pondos number, I believe, as many as 200,000. In the remainder of
Kafraria British rule is nearly as dominant to the east as to the west
of the Kei. Adam Kok’s land,--or no man’s land, as it has been
called,--running up north into Natal, we have already annexed to the
Cape Colony, and no parliamentary critic at home is at all the wiser.
The Fingos hold much of the remainder, and wherever there is a Fingo
there is a British subject. There would now be no difficulty in sweeping
Kafraria into a general South African Confederation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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