Kokstad is a town in the Harry Gwala District Municipality of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Kokstad is named after the Griqua chief Adam Kok III who settled here in 1863. Kokstad is the capital town of the East Griqualand region, as it is also the biggest town in this region. It was built around Mount Currie, a local mountain range, by the city's founder Adam Kok III, for whom the town is named. Stad is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for "city". The town is built on the outer slopes of the Drakensberg and is 1,302 m above sea level. Behind it Mount Currie rises to a height of 2,224 m. It is a centre for cheese and other dairy products. Kokstad has the N2 Highway south of the town's CBD. The R56 leads from Kokstad to Cedarville (45 km), Matatiele (68 km) and Maluti leading to the border of Lesotho. The R617 is also a bisecting route leading from Kokstad to Underberg (109 km), Swartberg (41 km) and Bulwer (147 km). The N2, the national route, leads from Kokstad to the east to Port Shepstone (175 km), Durban (380 km) and to the south Mount Ayliff (57 km), Mthatha (180 km), East London (419 km) and Qonce (447 km). Kokstad is 10 km from the Eastern Cape border on the N2. The majority of residents can speak IsiXhosa as well as IsiZulu. Kokstad has no rural villages to date. It is a farming community with majority of its countryside land being cattle farms or residential farms. History In 1820 the Griqua tribe which lived in Griquatown (in central South Africa) split and under the leadership of Adam Kok III, descendant of the former cook who established the tribe, one section first moved to Philippolis (southern Free State). In 1861 several hundred Griquas moved across the Drakensberg down the Ongeluks Nek to the vicinity of modern Kokstad. They moved because of the growing confrontation they faced with the Voortrekkers who had moved north of the Orange River to escape the laws of the British. The Voortrekkers, largely Dutch, secured leases over Griqua land and then refused to return the land at the end of the lease. The Big Hole of Kimberley was at the centre of controversy over one such lease. The Griquas were forced to travel over the Drakensberg into a region earlier devastated by the great Zulu King,