[1] As the Pedi paramount leader he was faced with political challenges from Voortrekkers (Boer settlers), the independent South African Republic (Dutch: Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek), the British Empire, and considerable social change caused by Christian missionaries.

Following the death of his father, King Sekwati, on 20 September 1861, Sekhukhune successfully defended his right to the throne against his half-brother Mampuru II and heir apparent with the support of his Matuba regiment.

To strengthen his kingdom and guard against European colonization, he had his young subjects work in white mines and on farms so that their salaries could be used to buy guns from the Portuguese in Delagoa Bay, as well as livestock.

On 14 July 1876 an impi of Swazi warriors spearheaded an assault on a Bapedi fortified settlement, which was futilely defended by Johannes Dinkwanyane, Sekhukhune's half-brother and a Lutheran convert of Alexander Merensky.

While their Boer counterparts did not join the advance, the Swazi reportedly massacred the settlement, including the women and children - whose brains were dashed against rocks.

[10] Apparently infuriated by the perceived cowardice of the Boers; the Swazi abandoned the front and returned home - and so, on 2 August 1876, Sekhukhune managed to defeat the Transvaal army.

On 4 September 1876, President Thomas François Burgers presented the Volksraad with a scheme to hire mercenary services in order to harry Sekhukhune's Bapedi.

The Volksraad approved of the scheme and thus hired the services of the Lydenburg Volunteer Corps, which were constituted under the command of a Prussian ex-soldier turned mercenary - Conrad Von Schlickmann.

[12] The Lydenburg Volunteer Corps primarily recruited from Europeans immigrants at the Griqualand West diamond fields, including the likes of Gunn of Gunn, Alfred Aylward, Knapp, Woodford, Rubus, Adolf Kuhneisen, Dr. James Edward Ashton, Otto von Streitencron, George Eckersley, Bailey, Captain Reidel and others from America, Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria and other European countries.

Abel Erasmus, the field-cornet of Krugerpos, was accused for 'treacherously killing forty or fifty friendly natives, men and women, and carrying off the children'[21] in October 1876 - arguably not the first time that some Boers were in breach of the anti-slavery provisions of the Sand River Convention.

Though some of the victims were shot by the Boers; Abel Erasmus' was also constituted of a number of allied natives at the time, who reportedly used assegais to perpetrate the majority of the slaughter.

Barkly, in turn, wrote of these allegations in protest to President Thomas François Burgers; whom he petitioned to punish the Boer war criminals.

The Boers inability to subdue Sekhukhune and the Bapedi led to the departure of Burgers in favour of Paul Kruger and the British annexation of the South African Republic (Transvaal) on 12 April 1877 by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, secretary for native affairs of Natal.

Sekhukhune I had many children apart from his heir Morwamoche II, he fathered Seraki, Kgobalale, Kgwerane, Kgetjepe, Moruthane and more of others who were lost in the battle field.