Andries Pretorius

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 remaining Voortrekkers had elected a new leader, Andries Pretorius, after which Dingane suffers a crushing defeat at the Battle of Blood River on December 16, 1838, when he attacks a group of four hundred and seventy Voortrekker settlers led by Pretorius.

An estimated three thousand Zulus are killed, while three Voortrekkers are slightly wounded.

Dingane's commander at the battle is Ndlela kaSompisi.

Following this defeat, Dingane burns his royal household and flees north.

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.

Mpande, the half-brother to both Dingane and Shaka who had been spared from King Dingane's purges of the Zulu nation, defects with seventeen thousand followers, and, together with Andries Pretorius and a force of four hundred Boers, goes to war with Dingane in January 1840

At the Battle of Maqongqo many of Dingane's own men desert to Mpande's army.

Dingane has his general Ndlela kaSompisi executed, and with a few followers he seeks refuge in Nayawo territory on the Lubombo mountains.

A group of Nyawo and Swazi assassinate him in Hlatikhulu Forest.

He is succeeded as king by Mpande.

Dingane's grave is near Ingwavuma in the Hlatikulu Forest—an hour's drive from Tembe elephant park.

Dick King, an English trader and colonist at Port Natalrides into a British military base in Grahamstown to warn that the Boers have besieged Durban.

He had left eleven days earlier, traveling a distance of nine hundred and sixty kilometers (six hundred miles) to arrive on June 4, 1842.

The British army dispatches a relief force.

The first Boer state established by the Voortrekkers becomes the independent republic of the Transvaal on January 17, 1852, when the United Kingdom signs the Sand River Convention treaty with five thousand or so of the Boer families (about forty thousand white people), recognizing their independence in the region to the north of the Vaal River, or the Transvaal.

In return, the Boers promise that slavery will be outlawed in the Transvaal and that they will not interfere in the Orange River Sovereignty's affairs.

Marthinus Wessel Pretorius succeeds his father Andries in 1853 as the Transvaal’s commandant general.