The majority of Voortrekkers, however, neither settle between the Orange and the Vaal nor trek to the north, but move northeastward around Lesotho and travel down toward the sea into Zulu-ruled areas of southeastern Africa.

The leader of this group, Piet Retief, attempts to negotiate with Dingane for permission to settle in relatively sparsely populated areas south of the Tugela River.

Dingane is at first receptive to Retief's entreaties, but then, apparently fearing that the introduction of European settlers will undermine his authority, he has Retief and seventy of his followers killed while they are at his capital in February 1838.

Dingane now sends out Zulu regiments to eliminate all Voortrekkers in the area; they kill several hundred men, women, and children and capture more than thrity-fibve thousand head of cattle and sheep.

Not all of the settlers are killed, however, and in December the survivors, reinforced by men from the Cape Colony, march five hundred strong to avenge the deaths of Retief and his followers. Commanded by Andries Pretorius, the Voortrekkers pledge that they will commemorate a victory as a sign of divine protection.

They then meet and defeated Dingane's army at the Battle of Blood River.

Their victory will be celebrated each year on December 16, the Day of the Vow.

The British government, acting largely at the behest of the missionaries and their supporters in Britain in the 1820s, abolish the Hottentot Code.

Ordinance 50 of 1828 states that no Khoikhoi or free black has to carry a pass or can be forced to enter a labor contract.

Five years later, the British Parliament decrees that slavery will no longer be permitted in any part of the empire.

After a four-year period of "apprenticeship," all slaves will become free persons, able, because of Ordinance 50, to sell their labor for whatever the market would bear.

Moreover, slaveowners are to receive no more than one-third of the value of their slaves in official compensation for the loss of this property.

The Boers feel further threatened when, in 1834 and 1835, British forces, attempting to put a final stop to Boer-Xhosa frontier conflict, sweep across the Keiskama River into Xhosa territory and annex all the land up to the Keiskama River for white settlement.

In 1836, however, the British government, partly in response to missionary criticism of the invasion, returns the newly annexed lands to the Xhosa and seeks a peace treaty with their chiefs.

Dutch speakers denounce these actions as striking at the heart of their labor and land needs.

Those living in the eastern Cape, most of them among the poorer segment of the Dutch- speaking population, are particularly impassioned in their criticisms, and many decide to abandon their farms and to seek new lands beyond the reach of British rule.

Boer families, together with large numbers of Khoikhoi and black servants, gather up their belongings and travel by ox-wagon up into the Highveld interior to the north of the eastern Cape frontier, beginning in 1836. (Travel farther east is blocked by the Xhosa.)

All told, some six thousand Boer men, women, and children, along with an equal number of blacks, participate in this movement in the late 1830s.

Fewer Boer families migrate from the western Cape, where they are more prosperous on their grain and wine farms and therefore less concerned about land shortages and frontier pressures.

The exodus from the Cape is not organized in a single movement at the time, but it will later be termed the Great Trek by nationalist historians, and its participants are called Voortrekkers (pioneers).

The first groups of Voortrekkers move into the southern Highveld, skirting the powerful Lesotho kingdom of Moshoeshoe to the east, and pasture their herds on lands between the Orange River and the Vaal River.

A large group moves farther north to the grasslands beyond the Vaal River into territory where Mzilikazi had recently established a powerful Ndebele state.

Competing for the same resources—pasturelands, water, and game—the Voortrekkers and the Ndebele soon come into conflict.

In 1836 the Voortrekkers fight off an Ndebele attempt to expel them from the Highveld.

In the following year, the northern Voortrekkers ally with the Rolong and the Griqua, who are known for their fighting skills.

This time the northern Voortrekkers succeed n defeating Mzilikazi and forcing him and most of his followers to flee north into present-day Zimbabwe, where he conquers the Shona and establishes a new state.

The Voortrekkers under Pretorius form the Boer republic of Natalia, south of the Thukela, and west of the British settlement of Port Natal (now Durban), in 1839, following the campaign against Dingane.

They establish a capital at Pietermaritzburg, named in honor of their slain leader Piet Retief and deceased leader Gerhard Maritz.

Mpande and Pretorius maintain peaceful relations.

The Voortrekker Republic of Natalia (the basis of later Natal Province) had been established in 1839, and by 1842 there are approximately six thousand people occupying vast areas of pastureland and living under a political system in which only white males have the right to vote.

The Zulu kingdom splits into warring factions after the defeat at Blood River.

One group under Mpande, a half-brother of Shaka and Dingane, allies with Pretorius and the Voortrekkers, and together they succeed in destroying Dingane's troops and in forcing him to flee to the lands of the Swazi, where he is killed.

The Voortrekkers recognize Mpande as king of the Zulu north of the Tugela River, while he in turn acknowledges their suzerainty over both his kingdom and the state that they establish south of the Tugela.

The British, feeling that the Natalia Republic threatens their security and authority, annex it as Natal.

They do not want the Dutch speakers to have independent access to the sea and thereby be able to negotiate political and economic agreements with other European powers.

They also fear that harsh treatment meted out to Africans—such as Voortrekker attempts to clear the land by removing Africans from the Republic of Natalia—will eventually increase population pressures on the eastern Cape frontier.

Although acquiescing in the annexation, the great majority of the Voortrekkers effectively abandon Natal to the British and move back to the Highveld in 1843.

The British, having taken Natal for strategic purposes, now have to find a way to make the colony pay for its administration.

After experimenting with several crops, they find that sugar grows well and can be exported without deteriorating.

Attempts to force Africans to endure the onerous labor in the sugar fields will fail, however, and in 1860 the British will begin importing indentured laborers from India to provide the basic work force.

Between 1860 and 1866, six thousand Indians (one-quarter of them women) will be brought to the colony on five-year contracts.

The Afrikaaner farmers, known as Boers, establish their own states as the migration of the Great Trek continues throughout the 1840s.