In the late 1700's the Xhosa speaking tribes were beginning to feel the squeeze on their territories. Refugees were fleeing, Shaka Zulu and his Zulu Impis (warriors) in the North and there were sporadic wars with the Boers in the East and British to the South. The 'cattle killing' of 1856 and the resulting famine devastated the Xhosa and their resistance to the colonial forces fell. On the advice of the prophetess Nongqawuse, people consumed or destroyed all of their cattle and crops. She foretold that all who did not, together with all the whites, were to be swept into the sea by a strong wind on the 18th of February 1857.
After the Ninth Frontier War the area was incorporated into the Cape Provincial Administration. It was never really populated by European settlers because of its war-like reputation and was left largely to the indigenous people.
The region was given nominal autonomy in 1963, under the 'separate development' policies of Apartheid South Africa. 'Self government' and 'Full independence' followed in 1976 and the area became known as the Transkei (meaning: the land beyond the Kei River).
The newly-formed Transkei state was not recognized internationally and it remained a diplomatically isolated, politically unstable, one-party state until after South Africa's first free and fair elections in 1994, when it became part of the Eastern Cape Province.
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