The numbers officials gave for blacks were mainly guesswork. Some appeared in a book of 1878 by the famous British author Anthony Trollope and are reproduced in the table. Trollope called South Africa a black man’s country, in which the number of all who were not white was put at nearly two million against fewer than 350 000 whites. Using modern methods, demographer Jan Sadie in 2002 projected the 1878 figure for blacks (excluding coloured people, Indians and whites) at 2.2 million.
| Population in South African territories, 1878 | |||
| Whites | Blacks & Coloureds | Total | |
| Cape | 235 000 | 485 000 | 720 000 |
| Ciskei | 335 000 | 335 000 | |
| Transkei | 501 000 | 501 000 | |
| Diamond Fields | 15 000 | 30 000 | 45 000 |
| Natal | 20 000 | 320 000 | 340 000 |
| OFS | 30 000 | 15 000 | 45 000 |
| ZAR | 40 000 | 250 000 | 290 000 |
| Total | 340 000 | 1 936 000 | 2 276 000 |
