AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
On January
I,
1866, British Kaffraria was incorporated in the Cape
Colony, which then included all the land west of the Kei River between the
mountain escarpment and the Indian Ocean. The African inhabitants of
that area, which later became known as the Ciskei, were Mfengu and the
remnants of the Gqunukhwebe, Ndlambe, and Ngqika chiefdoms. The
invaders had deprived them of the land their ancestors had occupied west
of the Fish River and had confined them to small landholdings between the
Fish and the Kei.These were insufficient for their subsistence, so they were
obliged to provide the main labor force for the white farrners and the white
inhabitants of the towns and villages in the eastern districts of the Cape
Colony. The British government, however, had halted plans for white set-
tlement in what became known as the Transkei, where the Gcaleka Xhosa
and the Thembu were still nominally independent people.
Repeated military defeats, lung sickness, and the cattle-killing had pro-
foundly affected the religious beliefs and social aspirations of the Xhosa,
especially those living in the Ciskei. Tiyo Soga, a Xhosa commoner back
from Britain with a Scottish education, a Scottish wife, and the status of