The Hottentots compelled Tao to retreat, but the mulatto Gricquas arrived from the south, and, allying themselves with the Bechuana, stopped the rout.  The Gricquas sprang from and took their name from an old Hottentot tribe.  They were led by Kok and Barends, and by adding other elements they became, partly through their own efforts and partly through the efforts of the missionaries, a community of fairly well civilized people.  In Gricqualand West the mulatto Gricquas, under their chiefs Kok and Waterboer, lived until the discovery of diamonds.

The Griquas and Bechuana tribes were thus gradually checking the Hottentots when, in the nineteenth century, there came two new developments:  first, the English took possession of Cape Colony, and the Dutch began to move in larger numbers toward the interior; secondly, a newer and fiercer element of the Bantu tribes, the Zulu-Kaffirs, appeared.  The Kaffirs, or as they called themselves, the Amazosas, claimed descent from Zuide, a great chief of the fifteenth century in the lake country.  They are among the tallest people in the world, averaging five feet ten inches, and are slim, well-proportioned, and muscular.  The more warlike tribes were usually clothed in leopard or ox skins.  Cattle formed their chief wealth, stock breeding and hunting and fighting their main pursuits.  Mentally they were men of tact and intelligence, with a national religion based upon ancestor worship, while their government was a patriarchal monarchy limited by an aristocracy and almost feudal in character.  The common law which had grown up from the decisions of the chiefs made the head of the family responsible for the conduct of its branches, a village for all its residents, and the clan for all its villages.  Finally there was a paramount chief, who was the civil and military father of his people.  These people laid waste to the coast regions and in 1779 came in contact with the Dutch.  A series of Dutch-Kaffir wars ensued between 1779 and 1795 in which the Dutch were hard pressed.

In 1806 the English took final possession of Cape Colony.  At that time there were twenty-five thousand Boers, twenty-five thousand pure and mixed Hottentots, and twenty-five thousand slaves secured from the east coast.  Between 1811 and 1877 there were six Kaffir-English wars.  One of these in 1818 grew out of the ignorant interference of the English with the Kaffir tribal system; then there came a terrible war between 1834 and 1835, followed by the annexation of all the country as far as the Kei River.  The war of the Axe (1846-48) led to further annexation by the British.

Hostilities broke out again in 1856 and 1863.  In the former year, despairing of resistance to invading England, a prophet arose who advised the wholesale destruction of all Kaffir property except weapons, in order that this faith might bring back their dead heroes.  The result was that almost a third of the nation perished from hunger.  Fresh troubles occurred in 1877, when the Ama-Xosa confederacy was finally broken up, and to-day gradually these tribes are passing from independence to a state of mild vassalage to the British.