The two Boer republics, the Orange Free…

The two Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, are squeezed between the British-ruled Cape Colony to the south and west, Zululand to the east and Matabeleland and Bechuanaland to the north.

There had been a series of skirmishes within the Transvaal between the Boers and indigenous local tribes during the 1870s.

In particular, intensifying struggles between Boers and the Pedi, a Northern Sotho group led by Sekhukune I, over land and labor results in the war of 1876, in which the attacking Boers are defeated, in part because of the firepower bought with proceeds of early Pedi labor migration to the Kimberley diamond fields.