A region in the south-east of South Africa, along the coast, now part of the Eastern Cape Province. The name matters in history more than in geography. Under apartheid, the white South African government set aside ten areas as 'homelands' — sometimes called Bantustans — and said that black South Africans belonged there as citizens, not in South Africa proper. Transkei was the first of these to be declared 'independent', in 1976. No other country in the world recognised that independence; everyone understood it as a way of stripping millions of black people of their South African citizenship while keeping their labour. Transkei was reabsorbed into South Africa in 1994 when apartheid ended and the country was redrawn into nine provinces. You will meet the word mainly in history books, in writing about apartheid, and in life stories — Nelson Mandela was born in this region, and he writes about it. It is a proper noun, so it always takes a capital letter, and it usually appears with 'the' in older writing (the Transkei), though modern writing often drops it. Today the area is known for its green hills, its coastline (the Wild Coast), and as the Xhosa-speaking heartland.

特蘭斯凱（南非東開普省境內的一個地區，種族隔離時期的「黑人家園」之一）