A great variety of races inhabit these countries of southern Ethiopia. The Kaficho (people of Kaffa proper) are said to be of the same stock as the northern Abyssinians and to have been separated from the rest of the country by the Mahommedan invasion of the 16th century. Thus Jimma, immediately north of Kaffa proper, is peopled by Mahommedan Gallas. The Kaficho, though much mixed with Galla blood, retained their Christianity and a knowledge of Geez, the ecclesiastical tongue of Abyssinia. The ordinary language of the Kaficho has no outward resemblance to modern Abyssinian. Their speech was, however, stated by Dr C. T. Beke (c. 1850) to be cognate with the Gonga tongue, spoken in a portion of Damot, on the northern side of the Abai. Kaffa, after having been ruled by independent sovereigns, who were also suzerains of the neighbouring states, was about 1895 conquered by the Abyssinians. The first European explorer of Kaffa was Antoine de’Abbadie, who visited it in 1843. Not until the early years of the 20th century was the country accurately mapped.
KAFFIR BREAD, in botany, the popular name for a species of Encephalartos (E. caffra), one of the cycads, a native of South Africa, so called from the farinaceous food-stuff which is found at the apex of the stem (Gr. ἐν, in, κεφαλή, head, and ἄρτος, bread). It is a tree reaching nearly 20 ft. in height, with very stiff, spreading pinnate leaves 3 to 4 ft. long and recurving at the tip. The species of Encephalartos, which are natives of tropical and South Africa, form handsome greenhouse and conservatory plants; some species are effectively used in subtropical gardening in the summer months.
KAFFIRS (Arabic Kafir, an unbeliever), a name given by the Arabs to the native races of the east coast of Africa. The term was current along the east coast at the arrival of the Portuguese, and passed from them to the Dutch and English, and to the natives themselves under the form of Kafula. There are no general or collective national names for these peoples, and the various tribal divisions are mostly designated by historical or legendary chiefs, founders of dynasties or hereditary chieftaincies. The term has no real ethnological value, for the Kaffirs have no national unity. To-day it is used to describe that large family of Bantu negroes inhabiting the greater part of the Cape, the whole of Natal and Zululand, and the Portuguese dominions on the east coast south of the Zambezi. The name is also loosely applied to any negro inhabitant of South Africa. For example, the Bechuana of the Transvaal and Orange Free State are usually called Kaffirs.
The Kaffirs are divisible into two great branches: the Ama-Zulu with the Ama-Swazi and Ama-Tonga and the Kaffirs proper, represented by the Ama-Xosa, the Tembu (q.v.) and the Pondo (q.v.). Hence the compound term Zulu-Kaffir applied in a collective sense to all the Kaffir peoples. Intermediate between these two branches were several broken tribes now collectively known as Ama-Fengu, i.e. “wanderers” or “needy” people, from fenguza, to seek service[1] (see [Fingo]).
The ramifications of the Kaffirs proper cannot be understood without reference to the national genealogies, most of the tribal names, as already stated, being those of real or reputed founders of dynasties. Thus the term Ama-Xosa means simply the “people of Xosa,” a somewhat mythical chief supposed to have flourished about the year 1530. Ninth in descent from his son Toguh was Palo, who died about 1780, leaving two sons, Gcaleka and Rarabe (pronounced Kha-Kha-bē), from whom came the Ama-Gcaleka, Ama-Dhlambe (T’slambies) and the Ama-Ngquika (Gaika or Sandili’s people). The Pondo do not descend from Xosa, but probably from an elder brother, while the Tembu, though apparently representing a younger branch, are regarded by all the Kaffir tribes as the royal race. Hence the Gcaleka chief, who is the head of all the Ama-Xosa tribes, always takes his first or “great wife” from the Tembu royal family, and her issue alone have any claim to the succession. The subjoined genealogical tree will place Kaffir relations in a clearer light:—
It will be seen that, as representing the elder branch, the Gcaleka stand apart from the rest of Xosa’s descendants, whom they group collectively as Ama-Rarabe (Ama-Khakhabe), and whose genealogies, except in the case of the Gaikas and T’slambies, are very confused. The Ama-Xosa country lies mainly between the Keiskama and Umtata rivers.
The Zulu call themselves Abantu ba-Kwa-Zulu, i.e. “people of Zulu’s land,” or briefly Bakwa-Zulu, from a legendary chief Zulu, founder of the royal dynasty. They were originally an obscure tribe occupying the basin of the Umfolosi river, but rose suddenly to power under Chaka,[2] who had been brought up among the neighbouring and powerful Umtetwas, and who succeeded the chiefs of that tribe and of his own in the beginning of the 19th century. But the true mother tribe seems to have been the extinct Ama-Ntombela, whence the Ama-Tefulu, the U’ndwande, U’mlelas, U’mtetwas and many others, all absorbed or claiming to be true Zulus. But they are only so by political subjection, and the gradual adoption of the Zulu dress, usages and speech. Hence in most cases the term Zulu implies political rather than blood relationship. This remark applies also to the followers of Mosilikatze (properly Umsilikazi), who, after a fierce struggle with the Bechuana, founded about 1820 a second Zulu state about the head waters of the Orange river. In 1837 most of them were driven northwards by the Boers and are now known as Matabele.