[3] On Christmas Day 1497 Vasco da Gama was sailing past the region now known as Transkei and named the country Terra Natalis.

A small clan living north of the Tugela River, the amaZulu, was greatly enlarged by its leader Shaka, and between 1818 and 1820 his Zulu Kingdom's military campaigns overran the area.

He went to the kraal of Shaka’s successor Dingane, ruler of the Zulu Kingdom, to obtain a cession of territory for the Boer farmers.

Retief managed that and, with the help of missionary the Rev Francis Owen, living at Dingane’s kraal, he drew up a deed of cession in English.

The Zulu forces crossed the Tugela River the same day, and the most advanced parties of the Boers were massacred, many at a spot near where the town of Weenen now stands, its name (meaning wailing or weeping) commemorating the event.

Other of the farmers hastily laagered and were able to repulse the Zulu attacks; the assailants suffered serious loss at a fight near Bushman River.

[3] Andries Pretorius selected Jan Gerritze Bantjes (1817-1887) as his scribe and secretary in recording events of the campaign and coming retaliation battle with the Zulus.

Bantjes documented daily in his journal the progress of the commando, from their start on 27 November 1838 until they reached their selected battle site on 15 December 1838.

[3] As Bantjes wrote in his journal: Sunday, December 16 was like being newly born for us - the sky was clear, the weather fine and bright.

[3] Returning south, Pretorius and his fighters found that the British had annexed Port Natal (now Durban) on 4 December with a detachment of the 72nd Highlanders from Cape Colony.

While the governor of the Cape, Major-General Sir George Napier, had invited the British emigrants from Natal to return to the colony, and stated his intention to take military possession of the port.

Pretorius took 36,000 head of cattle and proclaimed a large tract of land extending from St Lucia Bay to be part of the Natalia Republic.

"[5] The Zulus continued to exist as a distinct and numerous people with their own dispensation within their own territory to the north and east, in the region known as Zululand.

The national government declined to recognize Natalia's independence but proposed to trade with it if the people would accept a military force to defend against other European powers.

[3] On 2 December 1841, Napier announced his intention to resume military occupation of Port Natal, citing the Boers' attack on the Xhosa.

The farmers complained about the lack of representative government, and concluded by a protest against the occupation of any part of their territory by British troops.

In March 1842 a Dutch vessel sent out by Gregorius Ohrig, an Amsterdam merchant who sympathized with the farmers, reached Port Natal.

[3] On 1 April 1842 Captain T. C. Smith with a force of 263 men left his camp at the Umgazi, on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony, and marching overland reached Durban without opposition, and encamped, on 4 May, at the base of the Berea hills.

The Boers, cut off from their port, called out a commando of some 300 to 400 men under Andries Pretorius and gathered at Congella at the head of the bay.

On the night of 23 May, Smith made an unsuccessful attack on the Boer camp, losing his guns and fifty men were killed or wounded.

Meantime, an old Durban resident, Dick King, had undertaken to convey tidings of the perilous position of the British force to the commandant at Grahamstown.

[3] Finally, in deference to the strongly urged views of Sir George Napier, Lord Stanley, in a despatch of 13 December, received in Cape Town on 23 April 1843, consented to Natal becoming a British colony.

The institutions adopted were to be as far as possible in accordance with the wishes of the people, but it was a fundamental condition "that there should not be in the eye of the law any distinction or disqualification whatever, founded on mere difference of colour, origin, language or creed.

Commandant Jan Mocke of Winburg (who had helped to besiege Captain Smith at Durban) and others of the "war party" attempted to induce the volksraad not to submit, and a plan was formed to murder Pretorius, Boshoff and other leaders, who were now convinced that the only chance of ending the state of complete anarchy into which the country had fallen was by accepting British sovereignty.

Many of the Boers who would not acknowledge British rule trekked once more over the mountains into what became the Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces to seek their freedom and independence.